In this 23-minute animated short film from 1983, Melendez and Schulz take on American history the Peanuts way. As usual, it was Emmy-nominated, but I must say I did not really find this a very memorable watch and it was one of the weaker Peanuts films I have recently seen. There is an interesting snippet in here occasionally, but hands down when you want to watch a historic documentary you don't go for Peanuts. I guess they mostly wanted to make this for those who were already Peanuts fans in the 1960s and were grown-up now. This movie starts actually funny with Snoopy's car struggles as the gang travels to France, but the longer it goes the more the fun vanishes and it becomes 100% history information. Maybe you need to be an American citizen to appreciate this one. Certainly, a fairly different Charlie Brown film, but not a good in my opinion. Thumbs down.

I was 9 years old and in the hospital because of respiratory problems and was going through their video library and came across this. It was almost 6 years until I saw it again, I could never find it at any video retailer, and Paramount had just released all the shows remastered on tape. It's a somber and personal look at World War II, it should be required for history afficiados (forgive spelling). Do not miss.

This interesting short movie (24 minutes) won a Peabody Award for excellence. In today's cynical, apathetic society where people are not really interested in the sacrifices that were necessary to conquer evil, it's not surprising that this movie is not shown more. As far as the movie goes, any plot is clearly secondary to the point of the movie which is to educate youngsters about the Allied invasion of France and to a lesser extent the World War I events at Ypres and Flanders. The film is most successful in this respect with, (as usual) Linus as the champion. The images shown during his descriptions of the D-Day invasion are powerful and interestingly very atypical of the usual Peanuts animation style. Actual combat photography is used, although it is transformed into two-tone color images. The use of the red imagery is powerful in the battle scenes (it seems odd discussing battle scenes in a review of a Charlie Brown movie).The film does a solid job of educating and instilling awe, sorrow and compassion for the men who fought the battles discussed.Seriousness aside, the other parts of the film are typical Peanuts fare: Charlie Brown gets hurt a lot, Snoopy is in charge and gets into trouble, Linus is the scholar, etc. These parts made my 4-year old son laugh. But more important, it made him start asking questions about what the gang was doing, who the bad guys were and if any good guys got killed. These questions mark the beginning of an understanding of magnitude of the effects of World War II and the lives forever altered and ended by that conflict. In this respect, the movie is a resounding success and deserves the ten stars I gave it.

Truly an impressive feat, this animated special is quite a departure from the rest of the Charlie Brown series. Featuring rotoscoped footage of Normandy Beach and a reading of the poem "In Flanders Fields" by Linus, it will touch the hearts of adults while not being too gruesome for kids. If it were up to me, I'd require every person in America to watch this each Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and Fourth of July!