Snoopy Come Home

Seeing the 70s through midlife eyes

Dec 29, 2024

I flipped on the tv this morning and the channel was on AMC. It’s their Holiday movie month and though not a holiday movie, Snoopy Come Home had just started. It came out in 1972. Let me be the first this season to suggest you watch some Peanuts.

A good joke

Firstly, the grammar is impeccable. And these are little kids. Secondly, it’s funny. Like really funny from when we all grew up and people weren’t so sensitive. Remember the jokes from our era? And the stuff we used as insults? Your Mama wears army boots. Your Daddy’s so poor he can’t even pay attention. What?!

We grew up on a play ground where insults were traded but in a funny way. We actually memorized jokes. My Grandmother taught me jokes. Great joke telling was a laudable skill. I think a teacher would get fired now for telling most the jokes I learned at school. Some of the jokes were bad and perpetuated unhealthy stereo types. Many were just funny.

One scene that cracked me up in Snoopy Come Home was Snoopy boxing Lucy with the glove on his nose and landing punches. During the break between rounds he shadow boxes the air with a towel on his head, gargles, spits, steps in the rosin box and continues on to pummel Lucy to very 70s music. At the end of their skirmish he kisses her on the nose.

No one likes a moody person, Chuck….you go around a moody person and you go alone Chuck. And I mean alone.

Wise words spoke by Peppermint Patty to Charlie Brown in Snoopy Come Home

The movie starts with a clearly depressed Charlie Brown in bed with the curtains drawn. Linus goes to see him and opens the shades. Charlie says he is never going back to school, ever. He has embarrassed himself beyond living it down. Linus confirms that yes, he blew the spelling bee and let his team down. It was a disaster. Then as Linus leaves he turns to Charlie Brown and says “And the world didn’t end, did it Charlie Brown?” Charlie Brown stares at the closed door and starts getting dressed. Life goes on.

Enjoying the journey

The movie takes incredible amounts of screen time to show the most mundane of activities. Woodstock, Snoopy’s little bird friend, is afraid to go over the big subway grates. As Snoopy watches with a look of exasperation the little bird walks the grate’s horizontal grid, like the longest of lines at the airport. Zigging and zagging all the way to the end…and then does it again a few steps farther down the sidewalk. Taking the time to experience the journey is a theme here. The fun and the funny take place in any moment, not just the big ones.

There are other underlying themes: of being the other, of rejection and of perseverance. Snoopy keeps getting thrown out of places for being a dog. He’s just trying to better is little dog self but “No Dogs Allowed” keeps coming up. Made in 1972, is it a nod to the civil rights movement? With most of the songs containing words like “groovy” it could be. I don’t want to ruin the movie for you, but spoiler alert: Snoopy makes it home.

Happy New Year’s, fair readers.