Charlie Brown und seine Freunde (1969)

Charlie Brown und seine Freunde: Directed by Bill Melendez. With Peter Robbins, Pamelyn Ferdin, Glenn Gilger, Andy Pforsich. Charlie Brown makes his way to the national spelling bee finals.

“1st watched 10/30/2004 – 7 out of 10(Dir-Bill Melendez): Charming characters, unique animation, and a great lesson. Excellent slow-paced introduction to each character in this Peanuts cartoon with all the trademark character traits being brought out one at a time. Some very psychedelic-type animation matches the era(the late 60u0026#39;s) during a musical piece by Schroeder as well as a well-done rendition of the national anthem initiating the baseball season for the Peanuts gang. The only down-points are some of the songs, especially a small ditty called u0026quot;Failure Faceu0026quot; sung by the girls to Charlie. The story follows the down-in-his-luck hero Charlie and his attempts to do something as a winner by entering a spelling bee contest for his school. The lesson here, which you have to wait till the end to see, is that as long as you keep trying there will be little victories in life and that you canu0026#39;t change others but you can do the best for you and thatu0026#39;s whats important. Schulz doesnu0026#39;t try to color-coat life, he shows that it is as it is which is another appealing trait. Aside from these deep meanings embedded, this is also a very funny and light-hearted film(with many great moments from Snoopy, of course, for comic relief) that I consider a classic since these characters very rarely made it to the big screen and this effort is done very well.”