I'm Reviewing All Your Specials (and Movies), Charlie Brown: Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)

In previous write-ups of various specials, I've noted that the lack of adult supervision on occasion makes little sense.  There are adults in the world of Peanuts, of course.  All the kids have parents who are at least occasionally referenced, and each classroom is run by a teacher.  Simply because they are off-screen presences, mostly represented by trombone wah-wahing, doesn't mean they aren't there.

There are plenty of times, however, that the "no adults" rules make no sense.  Why are a bunch of elementary school kids allowed unfettered access to the school auditorium during Christmas break to put on their own Christmas pageant?  Why is Linus allowed to spend Halloween night by himself in a pumpkin patch?  But those are minor quibbles compared to what goes on in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, which pushes the lack of adults past all points of believability.  Despite that, Race, much more so than A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Come Home, feels like a feature film rather than an extended TV special.

After the disappointing performance of Snoopy, Come Home, the team of Charles Schulz, Bill Melendez, and Lee Mendelson threw themselves into making specials, producing 8 between the end of production of Snoopy in 1972 and early 1976.  I wasn't able to find anything explaining if Paramount approached Schulz and company, or if they approached them, but given the long gap between It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, which debuted in March 1976 and It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, which premiered in October 1977, I'm guessing production of this happened during that period.

Unlike Boy or Snoopy, which meandered around for a good chunk of the running time before the actual plot kicked in, Race jumps in the boat, so to speak, fairly early, as Charlie Brown and the gang are heading to summer camp.  The group is divided between four boys (Charlie Brown, Linus, Schroder, and Franklin) and four girls (Lucy, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Sally), along with Snoopy and Woodstock, who are trailing the bus on Snoopy's Easy Rider-style motorcycle.  Once they arrive, Charlie Brown is immediately confronted by the film's antagonists, three bullies (none of whom ever get actual names) and their mean cat, who make it clear that they run the place.

After some more setup (including a gag where Peppermint Patty, who inexplicitly is assigned a waterbed in her cabin, finds herself and Snoopy trapped bouncing on it) which establishes the bullies as both willing to cheat to win but also genuinely formidable competitors even if they were playing fair, we get to the big river raft race that will occupy most of the rest of the running time.  It's the boys in one raft, the girls in antoher, the bullies in the third, and Snoopy and Woodstock in the fourth.  

The smart thing about the river raft plotline is it allows the film to continue to have the vignettes that Schulz clearly prefers writing while also keeping things moving along in the larger plot.  Some things don't track (if this is during the summer, why are there not one but two snowstorms?), and there's an extended period in the middle where everyone is stuck on the shore, but mostly, the movie moves as fast as the river.

Of course, as I mentioned above, the plot naturally avoids any adults, which makes one wondering who exactly thought sending a bunch of elementary school kids down a dangerous river on a multi-day rafting expedition without any supervision was a good idea?  Indeed, more than most Peanuts specials, this seems to take place in a world where adults simply don't exist, other than the radio announcer briefly heard about halfway through the film.  That's about the only reason I can think of that the kids would be sent down a river that has (a) an active blasting zone, (b) rapids and waterfalls, (c) a lumber mill, and (d) a dark cave to get lost in.  

Despite the need for so much suspension of disbelief that it threatens to snap, this is still a pretty fun movie.  The bullies are surprisingly solid antagonists, partuclarly for Schulz, who rarely deals with out-and-out bad guys.  It was nice to see usually wishy-washy Charlie Brown step up and take charge, even if it largely led to him getting blamed (usually unfairly) for anything bad happening.  I also greatly enjoyed the running gag of the girls constantly voting, via secret ballot, on every decision, no matter how trivial or how obvious the outcome should be, because, as Peppermint Patty says "We do it in a democratic fashion, Chuck!".

After the disappointing score that Richard and Roger Sherman had produced for Snoopy, Come Home, the plan was to have Vince Guaraldi score the new movie.  Unfortunately, he died suddenly in early 1976, before beginning any work on the film.  Instead, Ed Bogas would write the score, the first music he did for the Peanuts franchise. This also marks the franchise debut of Judy Munsen, who was credited as music supervisor here before collaborating with Bogas for a number of specials in the late 70s and early 80s.  The music is noticeably better than the Snoopy, Come Home score, but like most of Bogas's music for the franchise, is a step down from Guaraldi's best work.  The title song, sung by Larry Finlayson, is mildly catchy, but probably a bit too low-key for the subject matter.  It would have been right at home on AM radio of the era.

Duncan Watson, who had voiced Charlie Brown in Be My Valentine... and You're a Good Sport..., played the role for the third and final time.  This would also be his third and final credit on IMDB.  Liam Martin, who had played Linus in Good Sport and It's Arbor Day..., also played the role for the final time, though he would play Charlie Brown in What a Nightmare...  Also returning from prior Peanuts specials were Melanie Kohn as Lucy, Stuart Brotman as Peppermint Patty, Gail Davis as Sally, Jimmy Ahrens as Marcie, and Greg Felton as Schroeder.  This would be the final outing for all of them.  The fact that quite a few of the actors were not in It's Arbor Day... suggests that the recording session for this might have been held before the session for that special, even though Arbor Day aired nearly a year and a half before this arrived in theaters.  Bill Melendez, as usual, provided the various growls and chirps of Snoopy and Woodstock, and Fred Van Amburg, a longtime San Francisco-based news anchor, provided the voice of the radio announcer.

In theaters, the film did better than its predecessor, being released by Paramount instead of an already-closed distributor.  Still, this was hardly a blockbuster.  It is estimated to have grossed a bit over $3 million in the US, which even at the time was considered rathe paltry.  That it couldn't compete with Star Wars isn't surprising, but it also finished well behind other Summer 1977 family releases like The Rescuers, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, For the Love of Benji, and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.  Perhaps the onslaught of specials during the previous few years convinced the nation's parents that they didn't need to shell out cash to take their kids to a movie that would be on TV soon enough anyway.  That might also explain why, after one more theatrical film in 1980, Peanuts would be strictly TV-based for the next three and a half decades.

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown is quite a bit better than the two prior movies, even if, at 76 minutes, it still feels a bit too long.  Still, its less-than-believable moments slot it below many of the TV specials of the era.  Only eight years after A Boy Named Charlie Brown had been a surprise success, it was already clear that TV and not the big screen was the natural home of Peanuts.

Next week (and I'm really going to try to make this next week): The gang (well, Charlie Brown, Linus, Marcie, Peppermint Patty, Snoopy, and Woodstock) is off to France in Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!).