What did we watch, you ask? Excellent question. Honestly, we didn't finish either. They didn't hold Little Man's attention for the duration of the productions. But, we watched Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales and Thomas & Friends: Merry Christmas Thomas!
This was a short collection of mini-cartoons. The whole thing was only 17 minutes long, and I think Little Man and I only made it like 7 minutes. All the classic characters were back, and some new ones -- when on earth did Lucy and Linus get a brother named Rerun?!?!? While all the old favorites were back, pretty much none of the old charm was. The mini-segments made it feel sort of disjointed, though I don't know that there's much they could have done about that. I felt like the characters were more hostile and whiny than before...not as witty or ironic...which is kind of crucial to Peanuts being Peanuts. It said "written by Charles Shulz" at the beginning - I'm wondering if they just took his actual comic strips and turned them into shorts; that's what it feels like, at any rate. I love Peanuts...I really do, but I wasn't really a fan of this Christmas special.
I know this is really cheesy, but I really appreciate the proper usage of the comma in the title of the movie :) That being said, I should also probably mention that I have had my fair share of Thomas the Train as of late. The introduction song is enough to make me twitch at this point. Anyway, we made it almost all the way to the end of this one. Little Man has been enjoying Thomas lately. This, too, is broken up into smaller segments/episodes, but that is standard format for Thomas, and wasn't a surprise. I suppose I didn't feel like it was very Christmas-esque. I mean, there were Christmas elements added in, but it largely felt like a "normal" Thomas series of episodes to me. The lessons were all typical of the show, and weren't related to the Christmas season, other than there were Christmas items included. It's not something I specifically disliked, but it didn't have any sort of "classic" appeal. We will very likely watch it again in the future, but it doesn't have the makings of a Christmas classic.
I am looking forward to continuing the Days of December Christmas Movie Watch-a-thon! Keep an eye out for my post on what we won't be watching this year!
They got a brother in the 80s I think..... And most of the cartoons that feature Rerun are essentially collections of actual comics that he wrote for the daily paper, which is why they're SO disjointed.
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