Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales (2002)

the audience applauded

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The first must-see film of the year.

It's 18 minutes. It's a series of Christmas theme vignettes without a continuous story. It's disjointed but it's still watchable. In the end, this is like a TV version of the newspaper comic strips. It has its charms but it doesn't last like the classic Christmas special. The most notable things are the side characters. Linus meets a mysterious girl who calls herself Jezebel and then proceeds to keep changing her name. I think that character has lots of potential. On the other hand, Sally has a fight with an angry kid over a small Christmas tree. The kid is off-putting and doesn't really fit the Peanuts style. It also pales in comparison with the iconic Charlie Brown tree. This is a functional Christmas special but it's nowhere near the classic.

I have always been a fan of the Peanuts gang, and my favorites are both Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy. With that said, "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales" doesn't have a plot but it only contains each plot of their own in five segments; it seems to me that they took five stories that were from the comic strip, and being thrown into a Christmas special. The animation is always good as some of the other Peanuts special; it is also really nice to see some of your favorite characters to be on this special and I really do enjoy for these segments so no need to go into detail about that. Overall, its not the best Christmas special, but its still fun to watch the Peanuts gang. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is definitely the best Christmas special which I will get to that later after I talked about another good Christmas special by the Peanuts gang, and that is "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown." I give "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales" an 8 out of 10.

I have noticed that a few people gave these "Peanuts Christmas Shorts" bad reviews. Perhaps far too many people compare this to "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Granted, I will say of all the Peanuts specials "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was the best of the bunch. However, each of the Peanuts Holiday specials were good in their own way, this one is no exception. Depite the fact Charles Schulz had since passed away when this debuted, I want to thank Mr. Schulz for the Peanuts Gang. It just would not be Christmas without Charlie Brown, the world's favorite underdog, and the rest of the Peanuts gang. I most certainly will not end this review without Snoopy, his short is the best of the bunch. Lucy, Linus, Sally, Charlie Brown, and Snoopy offer their takes on Christmas. As usual it is Snoopy who steals the show. Charles Schulz, Christmas just would not be the same if it wasn't for you. Thank you so very much for Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all the Peanuts gang.

This was pretty bad. There was no overall story like in the original special. It was basically animated vignettes from the daily comic strip. It had no structure really, no theme, just little shorts strung together to make a "movie". And I won't even go into how inferior the voicing was compared to the original.It isn't terrible...it is just a bad one to show after the original. It is cute and would probably entertain the kids, but it really isn't for the whole family like the first one was. (do I seem a little biased toward the original? Yes?) Go ahead and watch this one, but don't expect the charm of the original.