A Boy Named Charlie Brown Animated Film

A Boy named Charlie Brown is an animated film directed by Bill Melendez and produced by Cinema Center Films and Lee Mendelsen Films for National General Pictures. It was the first film based on the Peanuts comic strip and Peter Robbins who voiced all the Peanuts television specials roles, used his voice for the character Charlie Brown, for the last time. It revolves around Charlie Brown and other Peanuts characters competing in a spelling bee.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown is the story of Charlie Brown and other Peanuts characters, where the hero enters a class spelling bee. None of his friends believe that he can actually win it barring his faithful friend Linus. He springs a huge surprise for all of them by winning it as well as the school spelling bee, along with qualifying for the nationals in New York City. Linus had given his blanket to Charlie as a good luck charm but Charlie forgot about it and thought he left it at the library.

Charlie Brown in the film A Boy named Charlie Brown is not a successful boy who loses in baseball, cant fly a kite and everybody taunts him. So, he participated in the spelling contest and finally goes to New York City to take part in the televised national spelling bee. But, at the last moment he misspells the word Beagle and is eliminated. So he becomes very upset and returns home. However, Linus his ever-faithful friend supports him and tells him that it is not the end of the world and encourages him.

The plot of the movie A Boy named Charlie Brown also included a number of minor vignettes and subplots, in addition to the main story about the hero and the spelling bee. Some of these included Lucys continued attempts to get Schroeders attention, Charlies Baseball team and Snoopys ice skating. The Kite-Eating Tree, Charlies old nemesis, also features in the movie. A few appearances of Peppermint Patty are also included in the film.

Several original songs some of which included vocals for the first time, like Failure Face, I before E except after C and Champion Charlie Brown, were also included in A Boy named Charlie Brown. The title song was written and sang by Rod McKuen. However, the instrumental tracks that were used in other Peanuts specials also featured throughout the film. Untempo Jazz Tunes were basically included in the music.

A Boy named Charlie Brown was partly based on a series of Peanut comic strips which were published in 1966, in newspapers and had a different ending. He misspelt the word maze in his class spelling bee itself and was eliminated there only. On March 28, 2006 the film made its Region 1 DVD debut. It has some additional footage of about 5 minutes that was not shown in the 1969 movie. It was also nominated for an Oscar Award. Wikipedia