Well…thats a thing that exists I guess…Given how festive and warm and comforting the first Peanuts Christmas Special was, I wasnt expecting a match in quality for it’s 90s follow up…But I also wasnt expecting it to underperform my LOWEST expectations for it either.

It could not feel more ‘vacant’ as a holiday special if it tried. With 22 minutes dedicated to random subplots with weak to poor humour dotted throughout and next to non of the charm, it feels like someone watched the last Peanuts christmas special and figured the thing people liked the most about it was ‘Variety’ and very little else.

The ‘main’ plot (if you can call it that, because it gets name dropped a couple of times across the special, but doesnt actually get picked up till 4 minutes off the end) revolves around Sally preparing for her christmas concert. A good chunk of this film doesnt even take place at christmas…it happens before Thanksgiving has even happened!?

The animations fine enough, its technically sound and ‘of standard’, but theres not a lot of range of emotions on the peanuts characters, Charlie Brown is AWOL for a good chunk of it…The best joke in the thing is when Marcie and Peppermint Patty go to see a performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ for a book report, but neither know what Handel’s first name was…So they guess with ‘Joe Handel.’ That was the one and only point I stifled a laugh.

Its a fairly souless affair. Not offensive, I didnt come away angry that this thing wasted my time…More confused about how on earth this thing made it past test audiences given how light and ‘nothing’ filled it really is.

Even Snoopy struggles for air time in this thing…Its just…such a waste…

OH! and they screw around with the ‘peanuts’ sound. It all sounds like its been composed using an old Windows Midi soundcard. everything sounds and feels wrong.

I caught this as an extra on one of the Peanuts ‘Holiday’ collection DVD sets…I probably wont watch it again. Stick with the original if you want heartwarming festive cheer. This is reheated leftovers from an unrefridgerated doggie bag.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/its-christmastime-again-charlie-brown/