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It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown

It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $13.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not Your Best Work
Review: I recently saw this video, It's the Pied Piper Charlie Brown, and I have to say that I've seen better from Charles Schultz. Charlie Brown is reading the Pied Piper to Sally, but since it deals with rats Sally is having Charlie tell it with Sports Mice and Snoopy as the Pied Piper. At the end,Sally doesn't believe that it could really happen, so Snoopy is outside on his dog house inchanting Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, and Franklin. They are dancing around his dog house.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This is garbage.
Review: I was wary about buying this after seeing another of the latter-day Peanuts specials, "It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown". That show was an all time low point in the Charlie Brown specials. But when I saw this at my local library, I decided to give it a shot. I think this one is just as bad. In fact, it's horrible! There is so little story that several scenes are here obviously just to fill up time. Scenes that show Snoopy playing the squeeze box on top of his house, mice line dancing, and city council members singing barbershop quartet music make you realize that this program should never have been produced. It seems like so much was jam packed into the 30 minute specials from the 1960s and the viewing time went by so fast. This special is also a half hour but moves so slow and seems like it's never going to finally die...uh, I mean end. I could watch the Christmas and Halloween specials a million times and never tire of them, but I could never imagine having to sit through this again. It would be too painful. The adults just don't work and a lot of the kids are not even Peanuts characters! Don't let the banner at the top of cover fool you. This is no "classic"!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It's not the same!
Review: I'm a long time fan of Peanuts since my childhood and was very sadden with Schulz's death. I was excited with Schulz's very last video, but very disappointed as the style of his drawings are not the same. Schulz NEVER put adults in his comic strips or his videos which they appear with "honky" voices. I think Schulz probably died before he'd actually finished the drawings himself and someone else continued to finish the video by adding adults. "It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown" is such a dissappointment with adults. It's just not the same style drawings and having adults is a appalling. I would not recommend this video to others.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Zero Stars
Review: I'm thankful that I took this loser of a cartoon out of the library instead of purchasing it. This is the worst Charlie Brown film ever made and the folks involved in its creation should be ashamed. Charles Schulz would not be pleased. First of all, it features adults! Charlie Brown is supposed to be a kids-only universe, where adults are not even audible, let alone seen. The grown-up animation looks nothing like the peanuts - it's as though modern animation had been cut and pasted into the show. The story line is stupid, there is no existential angst to be found, and Charlie Brown SMILES all throughout. AAAAAGH!
If you love Peanuts, don't see this one - it'll break your heart.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Amazing Tale With An Amazing Bonus
Review: It's different from older Peanuts tales, but that doesn't mean it's bad! It's wonderful, and the Charles Schulz interview which is included is free! ...........

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pied Piper has special retrospective interview
Review: This is a little different from the other "Peanuts" specials, as it places Charlie Brown and the gang in the retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

It begins with Charlie Brown telling little sis Sally the story of The Pied Piper. Just like in Hamelin, their town once was overrun with mice. Charlie Brown goes to the mayor's office with a simple solution: make Snoopy the Pied Piper.

Promised a year's supply of dog food for his services, Snoopy (armed with a concertina instead of a pipe) begins to magically lure the mice out of town. But as soon as the mice are gone, the mayor goes back on his promise! So Snoopy plays his concertina once again, magically compelling the mayor and his council to dance out of town to the tune of "Snoopy, the Pied Piper." All's well that ends well.

It's good to see the gang doing something a little different for a change, but though I liked this story, I prefer original Peanuts tales rather then faerytale retellings.

As for this DVD release, there's some good and bad. The good is the bonus feature of a special 11 minute retrospective interview with Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz. The bad is that though Paramount is highly promoting their video release of "Pied Piper" with a chance to win one of 50 original cels from the making of the film, the sweepstakes will not be available with the DVD release. Ah well. Diehard fans will buy both I'm sure....

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: More Like the Pied Accordianist, Charlie Brown
Review: This is a pretty cute story, but I'd have to agree with some of the previous reviewers that it could've been done much better.

Snoopy is the star of this story (playing an accordian instead of a flute), while most of the Peanuts gang (save Charlie and Sally Brown) are reduced to mere cameos. The music is done by David Benoit, who proves to have talent and included some of Vince Guaraldi's original standards in the soundtrack (though I still miss Guaraldi). I'll have to agree that the adults look nothing like Charles Schulz's style. At least in the This Is America Charlie Brown series, the adult characters looked like something Schulz would have drawn. They fit into the story well and didn't dominate the way the townspeople did here in Pied Piper (not to mention those mice, who are in more scenes than Snoopy).

And what's with the 8 minutes worth of advertisements at the beginning of the video?! This is, after all, only a half hour presentation.

The best thing about this video is the interview with the late Charles Schulz (which is why I gave this video 3 stars). It serves as a memory as to why we love Peanuts.

If you're a collector, you'll probably want this in your collection. If you're not a collector, save your money.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It's not the same!
Review: This is not Schulz who drew all the strips in this video. There are adults--lots of them which is so un-Schulz as he does not believe in having adults appear in his strips or his videos. I think Schulz probably died before this video was completed and someone drew it for him to complete this project. I was at first excited being a long time Peanuts fan of the upcoming video and after purchasing the DVD of this video and I am appalled with the style it was done and the inclusion of adults.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Junk
Review: This is the poorest excuse for a Charlie Brown cartoon I've ever seen. The animation is cheap, and it's packed with pointless padding designed to fill out 23 1/2 minutes. Toddlers won't care, of course, but anybody who feels affection for classic Peanuts will hate this shoddy direct-to-video program.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not the same as the classic peanuts
Review: This movie was poorly written. The adults in the original movies were never seen and had honky voices. The peanuts were hardly in this movie and the animation is not even close to the originals.I would not have bought it if I had seen the copy write date (2000). I only saw the title and peanut classic. I would not recommned any except maybe collectors.


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