Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 29, 2021

This Blu-ray release of 'Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown' is only available as part of the four-film Snoopy Collection along with 'A Boy Named Charlie Brown;' 'Snoopy, Come Home;' and 'Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown.' This is the Blu-ray debut of 'Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.'

Charlie Brown and the gang – Lucy and Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Sally, Schroeder, and Franklin – are headed to camp. After a somewhat inauspicious start to the trip -- the bus gets a flat tire, Lucy faces down a bully, and Charlie Brown gets left behind at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere (Snoopy and his motorcycle to the rescue!) -- the campers settle in but quickly find that camp isn't all it's cracked up to be: they have to get up early, write papers, eat lousy food, and compete with other campers who are more skilled at the art of camp activities than they, and they're meaner and more aggressive, too. It's a rough go of it, but perhaps there will be some lessons to be learned along the way.

The film is rather pedestrian as far as the Snoopy films go; there's little plot or narrative dynamics in play. The film is essentially a collection of interrelated vignettes that never build to much of a working theme. They play well in isolation, and there is a larger "story" in play but viewers should expect a movie that is less concerned with its narrative and more concerned with toying around with the ups and downs of camp. The film looks great and is voiced well, as is to be expected, but it's easily the least amongst the mainline series films.

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Paramount brings Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown to Blu-ray with an impressive 1080p transfer. The Blu-ray is very well rounded: crisp, sharp, colorful, and largely true to its roots. The film transfer retains a mild grain structure, one that is steady, organic, and flattering. The picture is crisp and clear; lines are true, static background elements (wood tables, trees and grass) are well defined, and character models hold consistency in casual and wild movement alike. Anyone who watched on television decades ago in 4x3 format will be blown away by how well this translates to high definition Blu-ray at the 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Colors are just as impressive: bold, bright, and aggressive but not overly so; everything is natural and true, from clothes to exterior greenery around campus. The picture does hold on to the spots and speckles which are inherent to the original source animation, but even still most viewers, even hardcore videophiles, should be well pleased with this Blu-ray.

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown arrives on Blu-ray with a Dolby TrueHD 2.0 mono soundtrack. As the film opens, the title sequence song remains almost exclusively the property of the front center area; audio from both speakers images firmly to the middle. Fidelity and clarity are only as good as the source's inherent definition and limitations; there's certainly no feel for wide, aggressive, engaging, pure musical elements, but the throwback tenor certainly fits in with the vintage material. This essentially holds true for the duration; there's an unmistakably dated feel to this sound design which is apparent in additional music, sound effects, and dialogue alike. Nothing just leaps through the speakers with dazzling aural definition but certainty none of the elements are lacking in the fundamentals. The track features some good essential sound effects, such as the growling sound Snoopy's motorcycle makes, and the sputtering heard moments later. It's at least intense insofar as it exists within the larger track, serving as one of the best examples of aggressive audio. Some other camp action and weather-related audio cues are agreeably dense and deep, certainly with no subwoofer accompaniment but finding just enough punch to satisfy requirements. The reveille loudspeaker pronouncements, and the various verbal announcements, offer some of the most interesting and "wide" audio cues in the film; even if they don't stretch the system to its limits, there's at least a fine fundamental spacing sensation that replicates the real deal with enough gusto to make a modest sense of spatial gain against the track's other, more mundane pieces. Dialogue is clear enough, though certainly a little rough around the edges like everything else, and it, too, remains grounded in that front-center imaged area.

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown includes only one supplement, the film's Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:41). As it ships in the Snoopy 4-Movie Collection, no DVD copy is included but the studio does bundle into that set a digital copy code for this and the other three films therein.

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown is entertaining as it goes, but it lacks a sense of narrative purpose or dramatic draw. It's content to simply explore camp life through a series of vignettes, and even the build-up to and depiction of the final race is of little interest. It has its moments, and it's a passably entertaining film, but it lacks meat. Paramount's Blu-ray is all but featureless beyond the trailer. The video quality is excellent and the audio is fine within context.