Movie Review: Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin, is an impeccably inclusive and very emotional work
The theme of inclusion and political correctness has been very popular in different and very varied Hollywood productions, in all its genres the messages have been referring to the African-American community, the LGBTTTIQ+ community, the disabled, and more minorities.
We are aware that these issues are delicate to handle for a crystal generation that feels offended and attacked by everything related and what is not, in the end, everything remains in the eye of the beholder and affects what each one decides or does. feel represented.
When a topic like this is brought to the small screen with characters everyone knows, it is even more difficult. Without a doubt, the one who has done it extremely well is director Raymond Persi in his new mini-film Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin, this endearing and unequal gang has to carry a unique and extraordinary message.
What is the movie about?
Franklin (Caleb Bellavance) is new in town and wants to make friends but his usual tactics don’t work with the Peanuts gang, when the opportunity to compete in a cart race unexpectedly arrives, he takes it to impress his new friends and forms a team with the only boy who does not have a partner and whom everyone considers a loser, Charlie Brown (Etienne Kellici), together they will discover that there is much more than just competing and they will know more about each other than can be seen at first glance.
Interestingly, these types of projects are basically for a more children’s audience but also one that adults can enjoy repeatedly. This series of mini films has touched on various topics ranging from the problems they face growing up to the adaptation to the environment and the social environment without missing the message on which its main story is based.
This project has been presented just for African American History Month where we can see a more modern account of Franklin Armstrong’s arrival to the rest of the Peanuts gang and his constant fight and desire to belong and make new friends in what for him It is a new and strange city, as footage it is not as timeless as we might suppose, it is based almost entirely on the period in which it made its debut in the comic strip created by Charles M. Schulz, having with it a more serious emotion in the way in which its characters face new challenges in their short lives.
Franklin belongs to a family that has to constantly move to wherever his military father is reassigned, the latest move takes this boy out of the big city to reside in a quiet suburb where he meets the eclectic local children including Charlie Brown, it is to be expected that being the new kid he will find some of the children strange either in their hobbies or in their unequal personalities where he does not believe he can fit in, with the help of a booklet where he has listed what he has to do in the challenge. It’s even greater when you start to get to know them a little more closely.
The small town has a pizzeria where everyone meets to hang out, there he finds out that they are preparing a car race among the children, the prize will be a trophy and a year of free pizzas, for Franklin the prize is the least important thing. Now he has the opportunity to prove to everyone and also that he can make new friends if he wins the coveted prize. It is not strange to us that because he is new, no one chooses him as a partner to compete, with Charlie Brown being the only one available and with whom he does dumbbell.
Franklin and Charlie Brown are determined to win the race while the others don’t think they will get very far including Lucy (Isabella Leo) who didn’t have a good first meeting with the new guy, Franklin tells Charlie Brown some things about him and what They have had to live while they work together on the design and production of the wooden stroller, however, their friendship will not be easy between them since the pressures of the next competition weigh heavily both in the preparation and in the middle of the race itself because Each one has their reasons to win, the end is predictable in a story like this, making decisions that affect the result is very every day, here there are no losers or winners, each one takes away an experience about what they have experienced, starting a great and lasting friendship.
Franklin made his debut in the comic strip in 1968, the parallelism between these 2 stories between these 2 characters is evident, this can be strange and difficult to carry out in a current narrative, but this experiment improves the audiovisual experience, especially for those who know these similarities, the story is presented in a simpler and more accessible way for us as viewers that tries to be more in line with the modernity of the current world in which we live, taking it more towards a new vision without losing its classic and apolitical essence of American pop culture, being firmly grounded in the 1960s helps connect more firmly and faithfully to its source material and the historical origins it represents.
The script written by Robb Armstrong, Craig, Bryan Schulz, and Cornelius Uliano does not take any restrictions and takes risks by more clearly addressing the challenges that their characters must face with visible consequences, here we see that they can have arguments over the difference of opinions that cause frivolous, banal and childish interpersonal conflicts, this change not only applies to Franklin because he is the new kid on the block or because of his ethnicity and skin color, but that is also what matters the least, that is not the issue nor is it advocated. Rather, it is the social and personality change that highlights the risks that children faced in that decade and that here does not result in something too explicit or discordant, each of the sequences we see makes us more immersive in its plot.
The animation remains impeccable and spectacular, a combination of traditionally done backgrounds with CGI in a more artistic and bright style to give these characters and environments more depth and feel more real in a first-person perspective that increases the feeling of immersion, the wooden car race sequence may be the most elaborate in the latest works already presented by Apple TV+.
The message it gives us is a real problem that many children around the world face when changing their environment and social circle, with the arrival of social networks this has become even more complicated when you want to belong to a select group, Values such as friendship, camaraderie, the overexposition of the key elements are present in a subtle but direct way in which as viewers we feel related to their characters, perhaps the only flaw it has is the duration: 39 minutes are not enough to explore what Franklin’s life is like before his imminent changes, something that surely provided much more.
The voice cast includes Caleb Bellavance, Etienne Kellici, Isabella Leo, Wyatt White, Lexi Perri, Hattie Kragten, Arianna McDonald, Lucien Duncan-Reid, Cash Allen-Martin, Terry McGurrin, Robert Tinkler, Natasha Nathan, Charlie Boyle, Will Bhaneja, Maya Misaljevic Jackson Reid and Jacob Mazeral do a great job, trying to emulate those old voices from the 60’s and 70’s to give life to these characters without losing their essence.
The music composed by Jeff Morrow surprises by trying to establish a specific period with very subtle but effective jazz and soul. We can also listen to and enjoy songs by Stevie Wonder, Little Richard, James Brown, John Coltrane, Billy Preston, Sam & Dave, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, and Chuck Berry among others who support and give meaning to everything audiovisual.
In conclusion, Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin is an impeccable and extremely emotional work that makes us as viewers want to continue watching those specials that introduce us to each of their characters, with deeper stories that not only serve to entertain but also They leave us a clear message without falling into pretensions and clichés typical of an animated genre that is overrated nowadays.
Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin is now available on the Apple TV+ platform.
