Tag Archives: Arrin Skelley

1980, Highly Recommended, Television

She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980, Phil Roman)

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She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown is all about Peppermint Patty (Patricia Patts). Charlie Brown (Arrin Skelley) has a couple appearances, but it’s just for the brand. Skate is all Peppermint Patty, Snoopy, Marcie (Casey Carlson), and Woodstock. Patty’s training for an ice skating competition. Snoopy’s her coach–and an accomplished skater himself–while Marcie and Woodstock offer various kinds of support. Sometimes rather consequentially.

What’s so striking about Skate, right off, is the ice skating. The attention to the animation, the way Roman directs the sequences, it’s a showcase for Peppermint Patty’s ice skating. And her eventual competitors. Roman and his animators excel at showing the accomplishments in the skating. Patty’s got a bunch of great, fast expressions as she goes through her routines. It’s lovely.

The story is fairly sparse. Patty has to wake Snoopy up to get him to coach, they get into a fight with some boy hockey players (it’s a weird, but rather successful scene), not much else. Not until Patty gets Marcie to make her the skating outfit, but she doesn’t give her any warning. They do it the day of the competition (or at least immediately preceding it in the present action) so it’s build-up to the finale, not a subplot.

Carlson’s hilarious as Marcie in Skate. She gets the best jokes. Snoopy gets a few visual gags–the first one is subtle and hilarious so it’d be hard to beat–while writer Charles M. Schulz gets the heftier material to Carlson in the dialogue. Though Marcie doesn’t get to have anything at the end. Snoopy’s gets a really good bit during the finale, as does Woodstock. And Patty’s skating. Marcie’s just with the mostly non-speaking Peanuts kids cheering Patty on. Skelley (and Charlie Brown) actually get the lines there, which are at best mediocre expository remarks. It’s kind of weird. More of that Charlie Brown branding.

But it’s just before Patty’s final skate so as long as it comes off, it’ll all work. And it does come off. Everything works just right–Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen’s music (and the Puccini aria), Roger Donley and Chuck McCann’s editing–the animating, Roman’s direction, Schulz’s plotting. She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown is outstanding; it’s meticulous and assured. Even when a moment shouldn’t work, it does thanks to the animation coming through or Carlson or Patts or just how fast Schulz moves things along.

And then there’s this perfect little end tag too.

Skate’s great.

3/3Highly Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Phil Roman; written by Charles M. Schulz; edited by Roger Donley and Chuck McCann; music by Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen; produced by Bill Melendez; aired by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Starring Patricia Patts (Peppermint Patty), Casey Carlson (Marcie), and Arrin Skelley (Charlie Brown).

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1977, Not Recommended, Television

It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977, Phil Roman)

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It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown is a little weird. Not only because the opening establishing shot has adults (albeit in extreme long shot) but also because Snoopy’s helicoptering around on his ears and Woodstock is his cameraperson. And it’s about the homecoming game, where Charlie Brown is the star kicker. And Snoopy’s both ref and mascot and the kids in the stands put on dances in his honor. First Kiss is painfully trying to be hip but it’s also kind of ambitious. It’s going where no “Peanuts” special has gone before.

All of the jokes fall a little flat. The Snoopy stuff is too overdone. The football game gets a lot of attention, but every time Charlie Brown (Arrin Skelley) goes to kick, Lucy (Michelle Muller)–who is on his team–pulls the ball. And everyone blames Charlie Brown for it because, well, apparently no one ever sees Lucy pull the ball. First Kiss has Peppermint Patty (Laura Planting) getting mad at Charlie Brown. It’s kind of intense.

But the First Kiss stuff is about how Charlie Brown is going to escort the Little Red-Haired Girl at the Homecoming dance. She’s the queen and he’s up. Somehow he’s forgotten he agreed to this activity, which is actually kind of fine given the final punchline in First Kiss but only if writer Charles M. Schulz is trying to imply Charlie Brown has blackouts.

He’s not. Unfortunately. Schulz is just really lazy with the script. He goes big with First Kiss–there are a lot of constant elements to contend with. The football game has the other team, it has the kids cheering, it has the cheerleaders, it has Snoopy, it has Linus sitting around giving Charlie Brown bad advice. The dance is different–and where director Roman gets a tad more enthusiastic.

Roman’s direction is good throughout. More than enough to make up for the animation inconsistencies. Though the repeated frames on the Little Red-Haired Girl get annoying fast. Roger Donley and Chuck McCann edit the actual football game in the football game quite well. The rest is fine. Except on the Little Red-Haired Girl. All the shots of her go on way too long. It’s yet another weird thing about the special.

Not to mention Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen’s funk-lite score. It’s… a lot.

First Kiss is never particularly strong, so it’s never disappointing. It even impresses a bit with Charlie Brown at the dance. It’s just too late. The whole script feels distracted and detached.

Good performance from Muller. Mixed performance from Skelley.

It ought to be better. But it’s not terrible, it’s just kind of blah.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Phil Roman; written by Charles M. Schulz; edited by Roger Donley and Chuck McCann; music by Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen; production designers, Evert Brown, Bernard Gruver, and Dean Spille; produced by Bill Melendez; aired by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Starring Arrin Skelley (Charlie Brown), Laura Planting (Peppermint Patty), Daniel Anderson (Linus van Pelt), and Michelle Muller (Lucy van Pelt).

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1979, Cartoon, Not Recommended

It's Dental Flossophy, Charlie Brown (1980, Bill Melendez and Phil Roman)

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There’s an adorable moment when Woodstock makes a nest out of dental floss in It’s Dental Flossophy, Charlie Brown, but otherwise it’s a hard going five and a half minutes.

Charlie Brown needs to floss and Lucy’s going to teach him. She wants to get all that plaque out before she goes to Schroeder’s concert. There’s so much pointless exposition, all of it with wooden delivery, one has to wonder how much work writer Charles M. Schulz put into Flossophy. Or how much work the directors put in to Michelle Muller’s performance as Lucy. It’s impossible to believe some of her deliveries weren’t just first takes.

Woodstuck gets Lucy’s dental floss because he’s having trouble building a nest. It’s a twenty or thirty second subplot and about the only charm in the cartoon. Snoopy helps him with it, apparently able to maintain brain function through Lucy’s flossing instruction instead of just shutting it off entirely.

And it’s all on Muller. Schulz gives her all the lines. She’s got to precisely describe various flossing techniques and there’s no way to make them work in dialogue. It gets her some sympathy, even if her performance itself doesn’t deserve it. When she gets to the “smell your floss, isn’t it gross, that smell is the plaque” moment, the goodwill’s gone. It’s unclear if the plaque smelling is supposed to be funny, disgusting, or instructional; regardless, like the rest of Flossophy, it’s a fail.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Bill Melendez and Phil Roman; written by Charles M. Schulz; music by Vince Guaraldi; released by the American Dental Association.

Starring Arrin Skelley (Charlie Brown) and Michelle Muller (Lucy).

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1979, Cartoon, Not Recommended

Charlie Brown Clears the Air (1979, Bill Melendez)

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Charlie Brown Clears the Air opens with a deceptively funny gag. Snoopy messing with Linus. It’s the only funny thing in the cartoon, produced for American Lung Association with the apparent purpose of boring children into environmentally responsible behavior.

See, Snoopy’s in a mood because his dog house has got soot all over it because the neighbor is burning leaves and trash. The neighbor won’t stop burning leaves and trash unless Snoopy gets his motorcycle’s exhaust system fixed. Woodstock is Snoopy’s mechanic and he can’t figure it out–when the Woodstock cameo falls utterly, painfully flat, it’s clear how little Clears is going to impress–so they’re just going to have to live in mutual misery.

Then there’s the baseball game where Lucy can’t see because of air pollution and Linus can’t catch fly balls because he trips over litter. We see the litter. We don’t see the air pollution–apparently the American Lung Association didn’t offer the filmmakers much in the way of money, Clears has almost no backgrounds and nothing in the way of establishing shots. What can Charlie Brown do about it?

He can give a report at school.

A really boring report.

Bad dialogue throughout from Charles M. Schulz–so bad I didn’t think he wrote it–and similarly bad deliver from Arrin Skelley as Charlie Brown. There’s no way to make the clunky, expository dialogue work. Neither Daniel Anderson (as Linus) or Michelle Muller (as Lucy) do much better; they don’t do as bad, however, just because they don’t have as much dialogue as Skelley.

Clears doesn’t have anything going for it. Not writing, not animation, nothing. It’s charmless to the point of being annoying.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Bill Melendez; written by Charles M. Schulz; edited by Roger Donley and Chuck McCann; produced by Melendez and Lee Mendelson; released by the American Lung Association

Starring Arrin Skelley (Charlie Brown), Daniel Anderson (Linus), and Michelle Muller (Lucy).

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