Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown
February 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Can it be? This year is the 28th anniversary of this television favorite. Charles Schulz, creator of the endearing Peanuts comic strip and franchises, has passed away. The world, fraught with anxiety and fear, drive-by shootings, Columbine, 9-11, cloning, and yes, South Park, is a much different place. Yet, this little TV special still has relevance.

That’s because Schulz generally ignored the topical to go straight to the universal. He left us largely in the dark as to specifics. We’re never sure how old his characters are, or what grade they are in. They inhabit a world of sophisticated naiveté. And in that world, all are equal. Which one of us hasn’t had the fear that we will be forgotten when Valentine’s Day comes around? What man or woman hasn’t watched a mailbox, hoping to see an expression of love appear in it? Which of us hasn’t pined for some perfect person that we put on a pedestal?

Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown is at the same instant poignant and funny to the adult viewer. It's humorous because we can laugh at our past antics through the characters on screen, and poignant because we know we can’t go there again.

The animation is simple, perhaps even crude by Disney or Pixar standards, and the sound is medium-fidelity mono. But somehow it all works, and this gorgeous Paramount transfer does nothing to get in the way. The colors are rich and bright, the backgrounds devoid of noise, the sound clean and clear. Considering the state of television in 1975, this short no doubt looks better on today’s monitors than it did then.

As bonuses, Paramount gives us two extra programs: 1967’s You’re in Love, Charlie Brown, and 1977’s It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. These make for a fascinating comparative study. The animation for the earliest program is very crude. We can follow refinements through 1975 on up to 1977. But the most recent show slacks off in meaning, as few of the original participants were still around, and the new voices, in particular, seem more studied and cold than the previous ones. The peak, at least in this three-show comparison, is 1975. The extra shows, by the way, exhibit the same clear video accorded Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown.

The only other extra is a game that has nothing to do with Charlie Brown, but features characters from Charlotte’s Web! It might have been better to have sketches or interviews about good old Charlie Brown. To feature another show in the extra space only seems to bear out his own self-deprecating, paranoid fear that no one liked him. We know better and should receive better ancillary material.

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