(courtesy IMDb)
With no new comic strips since the year 2000 when creator Charles M. Schulz died having already made the decision to retire the beloved and iconic home of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and the gang, it has been up to an array of comic strip collections and specially-approved new comic strips, and of course, streaming specials to keep the philosophically rich and lovably grounded characters in our lives.
The latest outing to keep the spirit of Peanuts alive is There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy, recently released on its streaming home AppleTV, in which Sally’s (Grace Nicolaou-Wood) obsessively executed yard sale where “All sales are final!” and all that matters is filling up her glass jar with quarters, dimes and nickels, goes awry for Charlie Brown (Riley Vargas) and Snoopy (Terry McGurrin) when his beautiful red doghouse is sold off by mistake.
Given that it’s the neighbourhood kids who were the ones buying up big, clearly endowed with pocket money reserves unheard of in my childhood (though that still seems, happily, to be the age in which they live), it shouldn’t be that hard to find out who got the doghouse that has, most famously been the Sopwith Camel on which Snoopy’s dashing flying ace character (just one of the many gleefully idiosyncratic personas he adopts), aided by his mechanic Woodstock (Rob Tinkler), has ridden into battle with his nemesis the Red Baron up in the clouds.
In fact, it’s as that character that There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy opens, with Snoopy imaginatively soaring high above the clouds, the freedom of the skies, and his verdantly quirky imagination, his for the taking; well, until a mountain appears out nowhere aka a stack of boxes that Charlie Brown is carrying to the yard sale.
He and Woodstock do collide with the “mountain” but everything is set to rights reasonably quickly, although it’s clear that Charlie Brown doesn’t want to part with the baseball gloves and paraphernalia which began his less than illustrious career playing neighbourhood ball.
Like many of us, Charlie Brown uses these items as memory talismans although as he learns later on and takes to heart, it’s the memories that persist, not the goods, and maybe it’s the former he should be treasuring rather than the latter?
Still, it’s not an easy thing to learn, something this reviewer has found out all too well over the last few years as he tried to purge himself of a mountain of things that mean the world but which are taking up too much space, and it means that one crucial part of the yard sale, Charlie Brown isn’t present to stop the doghouse, which Sally thinks is a “dollhouse”, from being sold off to the lowest bidder (“No reasonable offers refused” says Sally in her cavalierly militant way).
Thus There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy becomes a search for Snoopy’s home and the site of his imaginative outings, with the detective hunt given typical Snoopy-ian quirk when he dresses up as Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Brown is forced to accompany him as Watson, all set to some lovely, ’60s colour-block backgrounds that recall old Pink Panther and Bond movie credits.
It’s a lot of fun, and adds to the lush, fully filled-in look of the new specials which still leave a lot to the imagination but which give the neighbourhood and the homes in which the kids live far less of the charmingly abstract look of the older specials.
One aspect that this very new special continues on from the classics we know and love is including iconic parts of the comic strip, often in passing such as when we see Schroeder playing his toy piano, a bust of Beethhoven perched on top, Lucy (Jo-Hannah Atchison) sitting at her therapy booth, Charlie Brown trying to sell his damaged kite at the yard sale (take that kite-eating tree!) and Peppermint Patty and Marcie (Lexi Perri and Josephine Nisbett respectively) getting up to all kinds of odd hijinks.
There are a lot more Easter eggs besides, chief among them Snoopy in full melodrama mode while Charlie Brown sighs and wonders he can’t have a normal dog.
Writer Rob Hoegee has seamlessly created a special that feels fresh and new, helped along by a more modern animation style while nodding to all the things audiences have long loved about the Peanuts specials, making sure to include as many characters as he can including Franklin (Kitai O’Garro) and younger brother Milo (Noah Paisley), who excels in Joe Cool mode at one point, Linus (Athan Giazitzidis), Pigpen (Lorenzo Bezzina), Rerun (Diego Whalen), Shermy (River Morales), Ruby (Genevieve Duncan-Reid), Violet (Addison Wagman) and Patty (Ariel Ollivierre), the latter in full Mean Girls mode.
Given we can’t given away the ending because where would be the fun in that, let us just say that There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy a slice of quiet joy, and while the included song “Home, Where Your Heart Found Me” by Allen Stone is a little too schmaltzy for this Aussie’s tastes, the special overall does a beautiful job of evoking what we love most about Peanuts and how, despite the occasional minor ructions between characters, everyone pulls together to help Snoopy and the bonds of community and togetherness reassert themselves once more.
There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy streams on AppleTV.
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