Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical

Very good songs for a 40 minutes TV musical. I think the last song is a classic in the making.

Very cute and sweet with pretty animation. I think this is elevated by Folds’ songs that have an honest melancholic tinge that make you feel something even if the short length makes some things like Sally’s turnaround, her unnamed friends, and the happy ending feel a tad unearned. But it’s a children’s special and in an age of eroding institutions a happy ending like that is appreciated, even if a part of me feels like it’d be more of a Peanuts special if it ended with the win being a fantasy of Charlie Brown’s like I thought for an instant it was. It should’ve been Peppermint Patty as the lead- if you want an aspirational headstrong determined figure who can be surprisingly wistful and melancholic and who’d save camps she is right there, don’t warp Charlie Brown into it. The more I think about it the more the shift of Charlie Brown into a moderately cool older brother talking about ‘Susie’s generation’ and saving the day rankles. For me this special ends as that fantasy.