Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! (1986)

Starring: Chad Allen
Grade: B+

“You know how I always dread the whole year? Well, this time, I’m only going to dread one day at a time”.

Now that is a Charlie Brown resolution. Honestly, it might be mine too.

Summary

It’s only one more minute before Christmas vacation officially starts. Still in the classroom just itching to get out are Charlie Brown (Allen) and Linus (Jeremy Miller) who are sitting in their seats. Just as Charlie Brown thinks to himself how happy he is that the teacher hasn’t given them any assignments over the holidays, the teacher gives him a book report on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Despite Linus also being in the class, Charlie Brown is apparently the only person stuck with this assignment over break.

No explanation is given as to why he’s literally the only person with this outrageous assignment.

Already, Charlie Brown is downed, as he sees this as a vacation-ruiner, which it is. He walks home with Linus in sadness. The two stop and see Lucy (Melissa Guzzi) talking to Patty from afar, so Linus launches a snowball in their direction. It misses and hits the tree above them. As a response, Lucy rolls up a much bigger snowball and sends it over like a bowling ball, knocking Charlie Brown and Linus to the ground.

Charlie Brown is sitting on his chair reading War and Peace, so Linus asks how everything is going. Apparently, he only just got done reading the dust jacket. After he complains about the book’s length and how it probably weighs more than him, Linus explains that when Tolstoy wrote the book, his wife copied it for him seven times, did it by candlelight, and with a dip pen. Sometimes, she had to use a magnifying glass to make out what he had written. She had to do it after they put their child to bed, the servants had gone to their quarters, and when it was quiet in the house. Reminding him that she wrote it seven times with a fucking dip pen, he can’t believe Charlie Brown just can’t read it through once. Just then, they are interrupted by the phone ringing. Peppermint Patty (Kristie Baker) calls Charlie Brown to invite him to her and Marcie’s (Jason Muller) New Year’s Eve party. She talks about the games and dancing, but he tells her he doesn’t dance. Plus, he still has to read War and Peace. Peppermint Patty ignores this and mentions how this is his chance to ask the girl of his choice to the party. She assumes it’s her and starts flirting, but Charlie Brown tries to explain further that he can’t do anything over vacation because he’s focused on his book. However, she chalks this up as him being nervous since it’s his first real date and tells him to call her later before hanging up. Lucy and Sally (Elizabeth Lyn Fraser) walk into the room, and Lucy talks about how they were just with Marcie, and they are going to the New Year’s party. The theme is “Boy ask Girl”, so Sally assumes Linus is going to ask her. Linus is still in the room and is adamant he has no interest, but she is blind to everything he’s yells at her. As Lucy implies Schroeder (Aron Mandelbaum) is going to be the boy to ask her, Charlie Brown brings up his book report again.

Lucy completely ignores this and talks about enrolling them in a dance class because a New Year’s party isn’t a party without lots of dancing. Linus goes with Charlie Brown to a bookstore. Since Charlie Brown is sure he’ll never be able to read War and Peace, he asks the employee if they have War and Peace in comic book form, a record of it, a tape or a cassette of it, a computer game about it, or film strips of it. Unfortunately, they don’t have anything. Then again, they probably did have King Vidor’s 1956 film adaptation, but that would be just as boring as reading the book. Anyway, Charlie Brown goes home and reads a little more of the book and starts to realize even more how much his situation sucks, especially because everyone else is having fun at dance class. He gets the idea to go down to the class to look in and see what they’re all doing. He puts his book in his backpack and puts it on, though the weight of the book makes him fall on his back. Countering this, he walks to the dance class with the book on a dolly, and he drags it behind him as he walks to the dance studio. Once he gets there, he lugs his book inside on the dolly and all the kids are dancing around in the room. He sits down to read, but Peppermint Patty wants him to join because they’re learning how to foxtrot. He insists he’s reading, but once Marcie changes the music, Peppermint Patty pressures him to come on the dance floor with her. They dance a little, but Charlie Brown can’t help but mention that he’s only on page five of his book. Even so, Peppermint Patty ignores him and continues to carry him to each dance step. After a while, he loosens up and follows the footprints on the floor just like the music says, and he starts to have fun with it. Eventually, the number ends when Charlie Brown trips and falls backwards over his gigantic book.

Later, Charlie Brown is reading at home and Sally interrupts him, wondering when Linus will ask her to the party. Somehow, Linus can hear from outside the front door and is still very adamant he has no interest in asking her. At the Van Pelt home, Linus and Lucy blow up balloons for the party. Rerun watches them and tries to help. Funnily enough, when he blows up a balloon, it somehow manages to turn into a cube shape instead of a circle. His siblings stand in confusion. Linus assumes he’s doing something wrong and that he’s blowing air into the wrong places, so he has him do it again. The same thing happens. Linus tries to show him how to do it on the next one. He gives him advice to blow slower, and it does look like it’s going to work until it ultimately goes back to being a cube shape once again. Linus takes out a different kind of balloon that separates into several circular shapes when blown into, so he offers that balloon for Rerun to try. Unfortunately, he blows it into one straight rectangle, so Linus gives up and leaves. Later, Lucy asks if Schroeder is taking her to the party, but he declines because “musicians don’t dance”. He will be playing the piano at the party though. On the phone with Linus, Sally threatens to go to the party with someone else. Linus encourages it, so she hangs up. Charlie Brown’s reading is interrupted by another call from Peppermint Patty asking who he’s thinking about inviting to the party. Admittedly, he hasn’t because he’s been reading War and Peace.

Been there, am I right?

Bypassing this comment completely, Peppermint Patty excitedly responds, “I knew it would be me!” because she’s insane. Trying to counter her refusal to listen, he changes the subject back to him by mentioning that he’s still on page five. Peppermint Patty says he has to invite somebody to the party, and he agrees, wondering aloud if the Little Red-Haired Girl would go with him. He asks Peppermint Patty what she thinks, and she flips out on him and hangs up. Following this, Charlie Brown walks with Linus outside. He has written an invitation to the Little Red-Haired Girl because he was afraid to call her. Since it’s too late to mail it, he thought he would take it to her house, though he’s worried. Linus assures him that all he has to do is slip the letter into the mail slot in the front door of the house. This isn’t so simple, as Charlie Brown is worried about the rare chance that he gets his hand caught in the mail slot. Linus notes how ridiculous this possiblity is, so Charlie Brown suggests another “What if?” scenario where he gets his hand caught in the mail slot and someone opens the door. Just as they get to the Little Red-Haired Girl’s house, Linus tells Charlie Brown he worries about the most impossible things. Trying to ignore his irrational fears, Charlie Brown goes to the front door and puts the letter in the mail slot. Unfortunately, his worst fears come true. His hand gets caught in the mail slot. When he tries to pull away, he flies back into the door, and it opens with him still hanging there stuck. He tries to save face by greeting the Little Red-Haired Girl, “Heather”, and inviting her to the party. He starts talking in circles because there’s no response and it’s awkward. Even so, no one is home, which is good because that one would have been hard to explain.

After Snoopy and Woodstock try on their suits and top hats and get their party favors ready, Charlie Brown lays in bed and thinks to himself. Tomorrow night is the party. The Little Red-Haired Girl never answered his letter, and he’s not sure what to think other than the worst. As Snoopy and Woodstock walk by outside and tip their hats to Charlie Brown who sees them from his bed, he turns over and starts to think about how bad of a start to the new year this will be.

Well, today is New Year’s Eve and it’s time for a party. Let’s just hope Charlie Brown is able to enjoy a little bit of the holiday in the midst of his book report.

My Thoughts:

As we know, the holiday premises have become Peanuts‘s bread and butter. With their track record in mind, tackling New Year’s was a no-brainer. Overall, Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! is a success and good enough to find itself as another annual special to watch before each year closes. With this being said, there are still some rough patches that stop it from overcoming its other holiday-themed specials, firmly keeping it outside of the top five.

On the positive side of things, the ongoing joke of Charlie Brown having to read War and Peace is hilarious. It does bother me that not a single other person is given this assignment, including Linus who sits behind him, but it’s simply a very Charlie Brown thing to happen. He bears this cross of suffering more than most fictional characters and though it can be exhausting at times, it’s damn funny here, highlighted by a sad Russian-sounding instrumental anytime the book is brought up or he’s seen reading it. Of course, Charlie Brown of all people is given the longest and most difficult book there is to read for a book report! Why not? Back in the day, this was a recurring gag in real-life too. Making this an assignment for someone in Charlie Brown’s age group is actually hysterical, and the follow-up joke being the teacher assigning Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in the final minute was the best way to end this special. It might be one of my favorite endings of all the Peanuts specials. For someone who suffers as much as our protagonist, you can’t write a better joke about homework. I know anyone watching Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! had to have been getting flashbacks watching him lug around this enormous book, struggling to pay attention to it or get through it. For the record, Charlie Brown knows his priorities, but he’s still a kid. He doesn’t want to miss out on all the holiday fun everyone else is having. At the same time that he pushes everyone to the side to try and take this extremely difficult assignment seriously, his peers pressure him to have fun and focus on vacation. Once again, the Peanuts gang thrives in being relatable. It all leads to the good guy trying to relent and have fun, crumbling with his initial priority, and taking the “L” when all his friends are nowhere to be found to console him, getting a “D -” after having to go through it all by himself with no support or understanding from his peers.

Actually, now that I’ve said it out loud, the third act does piss me off, especially with Linus pulling his bullshit once again. Though he didn’t screw Charlie Brown nearly as bad as he did in Someday You’ll Find Her, Charlie Brown, Linus proves again that he’s a snake in the grass at the New Year’s Eve party. Charlie Brown passes out on the porch trying to read a section from his book, again because he’s the only one was unlucky enough to get such an enormous assignment, and the girl of his dreams that HE invited personally FINALLY shows up minutes before midnight. First of all, what the fuck was she doing that she showed up this late to a New Year’s party? Surely an explanation is needed at the very least. Secondly, Linus greets her at the door and brings up Charlie Brown while adding that he’s not sure where he’s at. Now, this is how you know Linus is secretly a son of a bitch, something he’s proven more than you realize after watching so many Peanuts specials. Instead of looking for Charlie Brown because he couldn’t have gone far in this one-story house, he sees his target, bypasses his friend since he’s not there at the moment, and moves in. Keep in mind that Charlie Brown left the door open when he fell asleep and it was snowing, so a draft would have been fairly obvious. It wasn’t that Linus couldn’t find him. He chose not to. He didn’t attempt to look for more than a second. Despite the knowledge in the back of his head that his best friend is in love with this girl, Linus can’t help but ask her to dance immediately and she accepts. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing, and you can’t tell me any different. When Sally tells Charlie Brown what Linus did, Linus is visibly blushing. It’s because he knows he was wrong to do that. He’s guilty, and he felt the need to defend himself immediately because he knows what it looks like.

Charlie Brown is more in shock at the betrayal rather than mad at Linus, but Linus’s half-hearted apology will no doubt incense the viewer, as he talks about how he didn’t know where Charlie Brown went but adds, “…but your friend is sure a good dancer”. WHAT? Right there, I would’ve strangled him. It makes my blood boil just thinking about. I did appreciate Marcie giving Charlie Brown an unexpected friendly kiss on the cheek to celebrate the New Year, as it seemed like she was trying to make him feel better once she saw him stare into the distance of the doorway because Heather already left the party and he missed it, but this is more me taking the extra step to make sense of it all. An added seconds-long moment before she walks over where she takes notice of Charlie Brown’s sadness in silence would’ve made it a much bigger thing and could have made up for the final minutes of the party scene. It’s enough of a missed opportunity that the viewer still walks away with a sour taste in their mouths because of Linus’s actions, though Snoopy making sure Woodstock and his crew sending the “Happy New Year” message home correctly with the three different signs was a nice touch.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, Linus does run away with three of the best jokes of the special, and they are all direct responses to Sally. Doubling and tripling down on his refusal to ask her to the party, he tells her, “I am not your sweet babboo, and I wouldn’t invite you to a chicken race!”. I don’t even know what that means, but it’s hilarious. Later, he follows it up with “I wouldn’t invite you to a garage sale!” and I can confidently say I’m going to use that one in real life. Going along with this, his immediate laugh-out-loud response to Sally threatening to go with someone else to the party with, “GOOD! GO WITH SOMEONE ELSE” brought the overall letter grade of the entire production slightly higher. Has he ever been this aggressive in his responses with Sally? I don’t know, but it sure was funny!

The musical numbers felt forced. Admittedly, the “Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick” song when the kids are learning the foxtrot is one that stays in your head, but the musical chairs song that Peppermint Patty sings being the big one the special hangs its hat on, with it being played a second time over the credits, was awful. All the lyrics are literally just directions, even more than the dance song. The only reason the “Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick” tune doesn’t get more heat from me was because of how catchy it was and Desirée Goyette’s singing voice was rather soothing. The musical chairs one came off as annoying and unneeded. Why was this paltry tune the big number instead of “Auld Lang Syne”? When the kids break out to sing the traditional theme, it should’ve been a bigger deal on the level of the kids singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it was over in seconds once Peppermint Patty started yelling at Charlie Brown for missing the kiss at midnight and him just waking up. Also, the elongated gag of Lucy freaking out over Snoopy sniffing her root beer (as it takes the place of champagne since they’re children; another great detail that was used first in Snoopy’s Getting Married, Charlie Brown in the bachelor party scene, as it took the place of regular beer) wasn’t funny either, though Charlie Brown telling his dog directly that he “should never sniff at someone’s root beer” like it’s life advice was minorly amusing.

Other than Charlie Brown excitedly talking about how next year, he’s going to be a changed person that is both strong and firm, and eventually settling with being “wishy” one day and “washy” the next (and being happy about it) when Lucy tries to bring him down by calling him wishy-washy, one underrated moment of the special that needs to be recognized is Charlie Brown’s conversation with Peppermint Patty on the porch. Privately, she asks what he thinks are some “good rules” to follow heading into the New Year. Without missing a beat, Charlie Brown lists off the most random guidelines in succession, and it’s hysterical, especially because he’s not joking:

“Keep the ball low, don’t leave your crayons in the sun, use dental floss every day, don’t spill the shoe polish, always knock before entering, don’t let the ants get in the sugar, never volunteer to be a program chairman (my favorite one), always get your first serve in, and feed your dog whenever he’s hungry.”

Following this up with Peppermint Patty ironically walking inside the house with Snoopy and calling Charlie Brown weird was great. Lucy struggling with Schroeder almost as much as Peppermint Patty does with Charlie Brown was a nice side story to the action. They only have one private conversation where he rejects her, but he assures that he’ll be playing piano at the party. She takes it professionally and not nearly as angrily as you’d expect. Her simple comment of, “I don’t mind the rejection. It’s the smile that bugs me” was a humorous feather in the cap to the scene. Considering Charlie Brown was going to have to face two angry characters in the climax of the special, making Lucy overly aggressive too would have been overkill, so I enjoyed the decision to tone her down for the time being. The New Year’s festivities at the house party aligned well with the holiday though. The design of everything, the colors, the band playing (with Snoopy killing it on the trombone) festive “big band” jovial music, the party favors, and the aura of positivity surrounding the holiday all make Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! represent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day the best way possible. On top of that, they get the exhaustion and “back to reality” moments just as well following the vacation, especially with how it is still being in school. A teacher correctly guessing that Charlie Brown’s essay looked like it was written after midnight on the last day of Christmas vacation and he read the whole book but can’t remember a thing from it? Yeah, the accuracy is astounding. It’s hard not to laugh and agree with Charlie Brown’s decision to congratulate the teacher on her “remarkable insight”.

Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! is a great representative of the New Year holiday, the ever-important New Year’s Eve party, Christmas vacation, and being a kid just trying to navigate through it all while attempting to take your real priorities seriously and enjoying life at the same time. It just misses out on being on that higher tier of Peanuts specials because of a few misfires on gags, musical numbers, and the conclusion of the arc being as frustrating as it is. Regardless of this, it’s still good enough to recommend for an annual tradition, and that should not be taken lightly.

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