Charles Schulz and Bill Melendez are dead and it shows. Snoopy and the Peanuts gang have sold their souls to corporate branding. The first episode of Snoopy in Space follows the same style and pacing as any of today's formulaic kid's show. Playing things safe, they constantly try to entertain the audience at every second, with lots of "look at me! I'm doing something exciting!" type writing. Gone are the originality, the dissing mean cruelty of life that Charlie Brown faces, the jokes that are actually funny. It's all "Look at Snoopy! He does all the fun stuff! Put on a happy face! Look at our cast, it's the entire cast of Peanuts! Look at Franklin! It's safe! It's diverse!" One could argue this matches Schulz's later years when his work lost his own edge from his earlier years and not as good as the great Bill Melendez animations form the 60's-70's. This is a quick paced episode jam packed with showing off and quasi-educational interests, that expects the kids to have ADD. Having grown up on the Melendez animations, it's also a little hard accepting Snoopy's similar but a bit off voice. Snoopy's voice sounds a little more higher pitched; is it really that hard to get someone to sound similar to a voice without words? That said, the look and animation's okay, it's just the content has lost it's soul.
Review of Snoopy in Space
