What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Best movie ever!

As Good As It Gets

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

In this 23-minute animated short film from 1983, Melendez and Schulz take on American history the Peanuts way. As usual, it was Emmy-nominated, but I must say I did not really find this a very memorable watch and it was one of the weaker Peanuts films I have recently seen. There is an interesting snippet in here occasionally, but hands down when you want to watch a historic documentary you don't go for Peanuts. I guess they mostly wanted to make this for those who were already Peanuts fans in the 1960s and were grown-up now. This movie starts actually funny with Snoopy's car struggles as the gang travels to France, but the longer it goes the more the fun vanishes and it becomes 100% history information. Maybe you need to be an American citizen to appreciate this one. Certainly, a fairly different Charlie Brown film, but not a good in my opinion. Thumbs down.

As I watched the recently released on DVD movie "Ike, Countdown to D-Day", starring Tom Selleck, I was reminded of another film. It was just a 20 or 25 minute animated piece starring the Peanuts Gang titled "What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?" In such a respectful and poignant way, this film recounted the awesome sacrifices made at the Normandy Invasion and left me with a profound impression that will remain with me the rest of my life. I only saw it once, the night it was first broadcast, but I will never forget it. I notice it is not available on DVD. If anyone out there reading this has any clout in the digital world, could you please see about getting it released on DVD? As one American who owes so much to those gallant men and women for their sacrifice, I sure would appreciate it.

This interesting short movie (24 minutes) won a Peabody Award for excellence. In today's cynical, apathetic society where people are not really interested in the sacrifices that were necessary to conquer evil, it's not surprising that this movie is not shown more. As far as the movie goes, any plot is clearly secondary to the point of the movie which is to educate youngsters about the Allied invasion of France and to a lesser extent the World War I events at Ypres and Flanders. The film is most successful in this respect with, (as usual) Linus as the champion. The images shown during his descriptions of the D-Day invasion are powerful and interestingly very atypical of the usual Peanuts animation style. Actual combat photography is used, although it is transformed into two-tone color images. The use of the red imagery is powerful in the battle scenes (it seems odd discussing battle scenes in a review of a Charlie Brown movie).The film does a solid job of educating and instilling awe, sorrow and compassion for the men who fought the battles discussed.Seriousness aside, the other parts of the film are typical Peanuts fare: Charlie Brown gets hurt a lot, Snoopy is in charge and gets into trouble, Linus is the scholar, etc. These parts made my 4-year old son laugh. But more important, it made him start asking questions about what the gang was doing, who the bad guys were and if any good guys got killed. These questions mark the beginning of an understanding of magnitude of the effects of World War II and the lives forever altered and ended by that conflict. In this respect, the movie is a resounding success and deserves the ten stars I gave it.

This film is the sequel to "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!)". Charlie Brown and his crew are travelling along across the French countryside, when they come to Omaha Beach, where the allied forces landed on D-Day. Linus tells them about D-Day and WWII. This is an amazing film. I strongly recommend that you watch this video.