It seemed appropriate, today, to offer a review of the new deluxe edition DVD of the classic Peanuts special, You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown. While never one of the upper strata of great Peanuts holiday specials, I’ve always liked this one. When the school election rolls around, Linus becomes the candidate of choice of the Peanuts gang. With Lucy as his campaign manager, Linus seems a lock to win… until he slips up on the podium and says something he shouldn’t. Lucy, meanwhile, is conducting her own “polls” in a way that makes it clear that if the responder doesn’t give her the answer she wants, they’re going to get a beating. Actually, it’s rather intriguing how closely this cartoon mirrors the actual American electoral process.

This cartoon is an adaptation of a storyline presented in the comic strip in the 1960s, and as such, it has a much more episodic feel than A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin. We get that flow of set-up… set-up… punchline, over and over again. The jokes are strong, though, and the classic voice characterization is still there, and still fresh.

This DVD also includes the last animated special Charles Schulz was working on before he died, the 2006 short He’s a Bully, Charlie Brown. In this one, Charlie Brown and the gang go off to camp, where little Rerun is targeted by the camp bully, who soon rounds up all of his marbles in a crooked game. When it becomes clear that this guy has a habit of scamming beginner players, Charlie Brown gets elected to step up and teach him a lesson. This is a pretty unique cartoon in that we actually get to see Charlie Brown in the hero role instead of the usual scapegoat position he often occupies. Remarkably, this is done without compromising the character. There’s also a great subplot about Peppermint Patty — stuck at home in summer school — getting jealous over the fact that Marcie and Charlie Brown are at camp together without her. Peanuts is a comic about unrequited love — Charlie Brown loves the red-haired girl, Sally loves Linus, Linus loves his teacher… and Peppermint Patty and Marcie both love Charlie Brown, although Peppermint Patty would never admit it.

Once again, the good folks at Warner Brothers give us a nice documentary, The Polls Don’t Lie: The Making of You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown. Using many of the same interviewees I mentioned in my review of The Great Pumpkin  last week, plus a few others specific to this cartoon, we get a nice overview over how the special came about in the midst of the heated 1972 Presidential campaign and how Schulz’s intent was to parody the process, the system, and even the way polls were (and still are) taken. There’s also a really great bit about how Vince Guaraldi composed the Joe Cool song featured so prominently in this cartoon. Even the way the title came about is dissected.

I still love this cartoon, years later, and frankly I find the whole thing far more entertaining than the ridiculous two-year election cycle we’ve been subjected to in this country. How about in 2012 we take a page from Schulz, do the whole thing in two weeks, and get on with our lives?

More Peanuts stuff…

While I was getting ready to write this, I found something rather interesting. Warner Premiere, the company that has made “motion comics” based on the classic DC Comics property Watchmen, is beginning a series of motion comics based on old Peanutscomic strips. Since the first episode is currently free on iTunes, I downloaded it and watched. I’m not really wild about the whole “motion comic” concept, but I figured it was worth the free download.

The result is a resounding “meh.”

The animation isn’t great, but I didn’t really expect it to be. It comes across like higher-end flash animation, which is actually only marginally worse than some of the later specials (and here I am thinking specifically of Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales). I think the real reason I didn’t care for it so much, though, is that the first cartoon Warner made is based on the same series of strips as You’re Not Elected. The story, the pacing, and the jokes are all replicated on the special. Obviously they started with this because it’s election season, and I guess I understand that, but in 50 years of comic strips there are an awful lot of great stories that never got animated. I think it would have been better to start with one of those rather than with a story that’s already been animated really well.

Still, I’m going to reserve judgment until we get a cartoon that hasn’t been animated already.