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A Boy Named Charlie Brown
A Boy Named Charlie Brown DVD cover
Directed by	Bill Melendez
Produced by	Lee Mendelson
Written by	Charles M. Schulz
Starring	Peter Robbins Pamelyn Ferdin Glenn Gilger Andy Pforsich Sally Dryer Ann Altieri Erin Sullivan Lynda Mendelson Christopher DeFaria David Carey Andy Pforsich Bill Melendez Hilary Momberger
Music by	Vince Guaraldi
Distributed by	National General Pictures
Release date(s)	December 4, 1969
Running time	86 minutes
Language	English
IMDb profile

A Boy Named Charlie Brown is a 1969 animated film produced by Cinema Center Films and Lee Mendelson Films for National General Pictures, directed by Bill Melendez, and is the first featured film based on the Peanuts comic strip. It was also the final time that Peter Robbins voiced the character of Charlie Brown. (Robbins had voiced the role for all the Peanuts television specials up to that point, starting with the debut of the specials, 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas)

The film premiered on ABC Family on November 29, 2007, being the fourth animated film to air on that network, the first three being Eight Crazy Nights, Corpse Bride, and The Polar Express.

This film features Charlie Brown and other Peanuts characters competing in a spelling bee. Naturally, none of Charlie Brown's friends (except the ever-faithful Linus, who continues to believe in him when no one else will) believe he has a chance to win when he announces he's entering the class spelling bee. He surprises them all by winning not only the class spelling bee, but the school spelling bee, and qualifying for the nationals in New York City. Linus and Snoopy initially stay home, but follow him when Linus gets sick from missing his blanket (which he had given Charlie before he boarded the bus as good luck). Charlie would forget about the blanket due to studying and send Linus and Snoopy out to find it, thinking it's at the library. It turned out to be under Charlie's bed the whole time and was only discovered after Charlie unknowingly picked it up to shine his shoes with it.

Charlie Brown very nearly wins the tournament, but at the last minute misspells the word beagle (B-E-A-G-E-L) and is eliminated, and returns home dejected. However, Linus convinces the despondent Charlie Brown that his life is not over and encourages him to continue ("I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool out of yourself and everything. (pauses before leaving) But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?...The world didn't come to an end.") The film closes on Charlie Brown failing to kick the football from Lucy's hands for the umpteenth time, and Lucy's warm greeting to a prone Charlie: "Welcome home, Charlie Brown!" Life has returned to normal.

In addition to the main story about Charlie Brown and the spelling bee, the film included several minor vignettes and subplots dealing with Charlie Brown's baseball team, Lucy's continued attempts to get Schroeder to notice her (including a visually and aurally dazzling tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven), and Snoopy's ice skating. Even Charlie Brown's old nemesis, the Kite-Eating Tree, put in an appearance. It also features a few appearances of Peppermint Patty, including the scene where Charlie Brown boards the bus to New York City, although Peppermint Patty herself has no dialogue in the film.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown also included several original songs, some which for the first time boasted vocals (before this film, music in Peanuts specials were primarily instrumental tunes, the primary exception being when the characters sang traditional Christmas songs in A Charlie Brown Christmas), on tracks such as Failure Face (sung by Lucy and the other girls to discourage Charlie Brown from entering the spelling bee), I Before E Except After C (sung by Charlie Brown and Linus while studying for the spelling bee), and Champion Charlie Brown (sung by the entire cast after Charlie wins the school spelling bee). Rod McKuen wrote and sang the title song. He also wrote Failure Face and Champion Charlie Brown.

The instrumental tracks interspersed throughout the entire feature were composed by Vince Guaraldi and arranged by John Scott Trotter (who also wrote I Before E Except After C). The music basically consisted of uptempo jazz tunes that have been heard since some of the earliest Peanuts television specials aired back in 1965 (however, for A Boy Named Charlie Brown, they were given a more "theatrical" treatment, thus lusher horn-filled arrangements). The instrumental tracks used in the film were Skating (first heard in its original form in 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas), and during this sequence, the animated Snoopy segment was choreographed by American figure skater Skippy Baxter) and Baseball Theme (first heard in its original form in 1966's Charlie Brown's All-Stars) among others. Guaraldi and Trotter were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for their work on A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

A segment during the middle of the film, in which Schroeder plays the second movement of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, was performed by Ingolf Dahl.

The film also features a Jew's harp, which Snoopy plays to help Charlie with his spelling.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown, while directed and produced by the same team of Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson, who were responsible for all the Peanuts television specials (Phil Roman directed later TV specials starting around the mid 1970s), has many different aspects that the specials did not explore in a visual sense. The film itself has moments where there is rotoscoping prevalent, as in the sequence when Snoopy skates, and you can see silhouettes of real hockey players behind him. Some backgrounds have a very pop art kind of feel which was very reminiscent in much of the animation style of the late 1960s. Many sequences have a strong visual feel to them, as in the Star Spangled Banner sequence, where the images are purposely chaotically edited or the sequence where Schroeder plays Beethoven on his piano. There also seems to be a strong Andy Warhol kind of approach where actual photographs seem to have been painted over in semi day-glo psychedelic colors. Melendez, who had previously worked with Bob Clampett on cartoons back in the 1940s, also uses garish colors in some sequences, which takes its cues from many Clampett backgrounds, particularly a Warner Brothers cartoon called The Big Snooze which was directed by Clampett and which Melendez had also worked on. Many backgrounds are also rendered in watercolor, or simple pen strokes, or fine lines, or sometimes all three at once. There are scenes where colors will change solidly and erratically, as witnessed by the Snoopy Red Baron sequence in the film. Perspective and horizon points are showcased in the "I Before E" scene. Split screen is also used to much effect in A Boy Named Charlie Brown as well. But even with all these theatrical enhancements, at its core, the film still has the look and feel of many of the Peanuts TV specials.

The film was partly based on a series of Peanuts comic strips originally published in newspapers in 1966. That story had a much different ending: Charlie Brown was eliminated in his class spelling bee right away for misspelling the word maze ("M-A-Y-S" while thinking of baseball legend Willie Mays), thus confirming Violet's prediction that he'd make a fool of himself, and then yelled at his teacher in frustration ("Why do I have my head on my desk, ma'am? BECAUSE I BLEW THE STUPID SPELLING BEE, THAT'S WHY!"), causing him to be sent to the principal's office. (A few gags from that storyline, however, were also used in the 1967 special You're in Love, Charlie Brown.)

This film made its Region 1 DVD debut in anamorphic widescreen on U.S. DVD on March 28, 2006, by Paramount Home Entertainment/CBS DVD (co-producer Cinema Center Films was owned by CBS). The DVD has about 5 minutes of footage not seen since the 1969 premiere. The footage consists of new scenes completely excised from earlier home video releases (VHS and CED Laserdisc) and TV prints - most notably, a scene of Lucy's infamous "pulling-away-the-football" trick after her slide presentation of Charlie Brown's faults (and her instant replay thereof). This also includes extended existing scenes.

• A Boy Named Charlie Brown at the Internet Movie Database
• Peanuts Pictures at DVD Active