Needless to say, the computer-animated The Peanuts Movie (2015) contains a lot of humor.  What it lacks is the excellent wit of Charles Schulz‘s A Charlie Brown Christmas and, of course, the comic strip, although this is not to say it completely lacks wit.  No, sir.

Scriptwriters Craig Schulz (Charles’s son) and Bryan Schulz (grandson) purvey a Charlie Brown who causes problems for others as much as for himself, albeit one who is assuredly spared is the sad sack’s love interest.  The movie’s central element is C.B.’s hope of impressing The Little Red-Haired Girl, a newcomer to the neighborhood and, here, a lass whose face is very slowly revealed in full.  Amid all the slapstick, Chuck keeps his distance from her—but, withal, he does make progress and so a certain sunny vision arises in the flick.

No, it isn’t quite what Charles Schulz gave us, but I agree with the critic who said the movie feels like “the return of an old friend.”

Frank Capra didn’t always have good ideas for his films, but doubtless he did when he chose to direct a movie version of a Damon Runyon story, the title of which movie is Lady for a Day (1933), with a screenplay by Robert Riskin.

There are no idealists or innocents in this Capra film.  Instead we see the interesting phenomenon of small-time mobsters and a pool shark trying to help a financially poor woman—the apple-selling Apple Annie (May Robson)—fool the woman’s daughter into thinking her mother is a society lady.  This is the fiction Apple Annie has maintained for years.  At first the lowlifes treat their service to the old gal as something extraneous, beside the point, but later it doesn’t quite seem that way to them. Basically they are harmless lowlifes, never even roughing anyone up.

Yes, Lady for a Day has a couple of flaws, but it’s a work of a certain purity for which both Capra and Riskin are responsible.  It’s one of Capra’s feel-gooders, energetic and droll but without moralism.  The director worked well with his actors, the result being that May Robson is exemplary, Warren William amusingly assertive, and Guy Kibbee charming and commanding.

Lady for a Day (Photo credit: Wikipedia)