Best movie of this year hands down!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Blistering performances.

Fun Peanuts movie that has Charlie Brown going to France as a foreign exchange student, along with Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie. Of course Snoopy and Woodstock come along. There's a lot of fun to be had with the gang exploring another country's culture. There's also a subplot involving a mysterious letter Charlie Brown received back in the States from a little French girl. The animation is solid with some especially nice backgrounds for the French countryside. Love the colors in this. I also liked the atmosphere in the scene where the boys arrive at the château on a rainy night. The voice work is excellent. The adults actually speak intelligibly in this one, as opposed to the usual "wah wah wah." The music is good with some song snippets here and there. It's a very enjoyable cartoon with lots of laughs and likable, relatable characters. Some really funny Patty moments involving a French boy named Pierre. Not my favorite Peanuts film but a fun one nonetheless.

Even though "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!)" makes some deviations and aberrations from the typical formula and style of the Peanuts macrocosm (some that die-hard fans might even define as perfidious), it nevertheless results as being the best of the four feature-length Peanuts movies right after the first one, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown." In the fourth and final movie, Charlie Brown and Linus are selected to take part in a student exchange program between the United States and Europe. At the same time, Peppermint Patty and Marcie are selected for the same program at their school. The four of them group together for their trip to London, and our joined by the ubiquitous and inseparable Snoopy and Woodstock. As they leave the airport, their friends call out "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown!" The ever-sarcastic but nevertheless lovable Lucy tacks on "And don't come back!" There are some new things that are done with "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown." For example, adults, previously unseen and never given actual dialogue apart from the wa-wa-wa (produced by a hand being put into a trombone) are not only shown on-screen, but speak and some are characters in and of themselves. Secondly, this is the first time that I can think of where the Peanuts gang was ever put in real, serious peril where there wasn't some whimsical humor to keep everything light.Maybe that was part of what appealed to me here. The fact that Charles Schulz and Bill Melendez were willing to experiment and try new things, even if it meant breaking the conventions for the beloved Peanuts characters. It wasn't anything they intended on making permanent (most certainly not), just to experiment and have fun. And maybe it was necessary to gather more appeal from the children. As much as kids love Charlie Brown and Snoopy and their friends, Peanuts was nevertheless intended originally for adults only. So sometimes the gags don't always reach them on their own level. This movie can engage children as well as adults in every scene. What's more, there is also a nice little backstory in the plot and a great twist toward the end that I found delightful. Well, actually, I found the whole movie delightful. Schulz's jokes are humorous and with dignity, the characters received their due, and the whimsical adventures with Snoopy and Woodstock never fail to make you grin.The animation is not as fluid and enthralling as it was in the first two Peanuts movies, but it is a step-up from the sketchy drawing in "Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown." The color palette used here is bright, rich with hues, and pretty to look at. And once again, Mr. Melendez and his team effectively capture a drawing style that mimics Mr. Schulz's. And what's even more fantastic is the rich and wonderful music score composed by Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen. Although nothing can ever replace the wonderful jazz scores by Vince Guaraldi, these new themes are just terrific. There's a great moment where the gangs are gathering at a train station. There's no voices and very little sound. The dominant elements are the animation and the music. Not since "2001: A Space Odyssey" has a dialogue-free docking scene been so absorbing.This is the second-best of the four Peanuts movies. The only thing that really disappointed me was the fact that the number of characters travelling to Europe was so limited. Personally, I would have been rather pleased if Lucy and maybe Schroeder had gone along with them to Europe. Then it would have been even more whimsical and charming than it already is. And it is very whimsical and very charming.

In addition to dozens of half-hour television specials, Sparky Schultz made a handful of attempts to translate his comic strip to the big screen. "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown" is the most interesting of these because of its departures from the "Peanuts" formula.There is no interaction between adversarial couples Linus and Lucy and Charlie Brown and Lucy in this film, because Lucy van Pelt is present only to wave goodbye to the group of exchange students. (Exchange students at the elementary school level?) A number of adults are portrayed and given voices. (No muted trumpets here). Schroeder the piano man and Pigpen the human dust storm are left behind on American soil.This film was a labor of love for Schultz, who passed through Normandy after D Day and at one point was billetted at a manor house which could have passed for the Chateau of the Bad Neighbor. The geography is completely accurate, down to the villages adjoining the Andelle River.The more successful Peanuts adaptations are those in which the clever storyline outweighs the limitations of kiddie voice-over acting. This is one such, the cast including students at a French-language school in San Francisco. There is also an unusually large quantity of "dialogue" spoken by Snoopy's voice, director Bill Melendez. The beagle's impressions of a British toff and a crabby French driver are priceless.

The title is the best part of this third and final installment of the "Peanuts" set of films. This time most of the major characters only have token appearances as Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty and company head to France as exchange students. Naturally Charlie has some European relatives his own age that also have receding hairlines. As with "Boy Named Charlie Brown" and "Race for Your Life Charlie Brown", this entry suffers from a lack of material. The characters are just cardboard cutouts (they are just flat newspaper entities). It is near impossible to sustain enough interest to make a theatrical release. Still they gave three fair tries from 1969 to 1980, but ultimately all the productions are little more than obscure footnotes to the cinematic history of the era. 2.5 out of 5 stars.