Product: A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
Rating: 3.0
Good Grief! This Beloved Classic Needs Some TLC!
Maybe the reason Charlie Brown was feeling depressed around Christmas was because he saw this DVD. While I'd give "A Charlie Brown Christmas" 6 stars if I could for the show itself, the poor quality DVD that's on the market is another story: it rates 2 stars at best. Surely a program that's so loved by so many deserves the TLC of a proper remastering, and it's hard to understand why it hasn't happened.This year I bought my three favorite Christmas classics on DVD: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Charlie Brown. The first two were recently remastered and the results were stunning--better in every way than I've ever seen them look and sound on television. And I'm not talking about a "modernizing" of these shows that turned them into something different in character than they were--no, these remasters are loving and faithful restorations of these classics to their original glory. By comparison, A Charlie Brown Christmas was a huge disappointment. The video is passable, but having seen what restoration did for the Grinch animation, I'm also aware of how much better the Charlie Brown video could be. The audio, however, is atrocious--an embarrassment, really, especially considering all the great Charles Schulz dialogue and the incomparable Vince Guaraldi score. It's hissy, it's muddy, it's mixed poorly and sound levels can vary widely.The size of the fan base for this show would virtually guarantee financial success for a remastered DVD-I'm not sure who owns the rights to do something like that, but I hope they're reading this review!