It's Magic, Charlie Brown (TV Short 1981) Poster

(1981 TV Short)

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8/10
Magical Charlie!
krzykra5 May 2006
A magic show can only mean disaster for poor Charlie Brown and his friends, especially when Snoopy is the magician. This charming special is an exceptionally good one in the long line of Peanuts specials, containing the basic ingredients that make up the Peanuts strips- humor, simplicity, and innocence.

Snoopy puts on a magic show for the neighborhood kids, and when he makes Charlie Brown disappear (for real!) he can't figure out how to get him back. But rest assured, Snoopy always finds a way in the end, doesn't he? This show gives us some surprising twists to the ordinary world of Peanuts, including a glimpse (for the first and only time, as far as I know) inside Snoopy's doghouse, Charlie Brown's victory at kicking the football (maybe), and a rare moment of Lucy getting (in my opinion) her well-deserved comeuppance when Snoopy performs a feat of levitation on her and leaves her in a very interesting situation.

Great fun is always had with Charlie Brown and the gang. This is definitely one to add to the collection.
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8/10
Another highly enjoyable Peanuts TV special
Woodyanders8 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Charlie Brown encourages Snoopy to learn some kind of skill. Snoopy reads a book on magic and decides to put on a magic show as the Great Houndini. Although a fair share of the magic tricks don't work, Snoopy does succeed in making Charlie Brown invisible, but has trouble figuring out how to reverse the spell. Charles M. Schulz's typically warm and witty script milks the nifty premise for several very strong and sidesplitting belly laughs: Among the hilarious comic highlights are Linus fainting when Snoopy cuts up his beloved blanket, Snoopy smearing mud on Charlie Brown, Snoopy putting a white sheet, a belt, and shoes on Charlie Brown which makes him look like a ghost, Charlie Brown finally getting to kick the football while invisible, and Snoopy levitating the ever-snarky Lucy and leaving her up in the air. Another cool moment occurs when we get to see the inside of Snoopy's surprisingly spacious and swanky doghouse. The animation is bright and colorful. The supremely funky'n'jazzy score by Ed Bogus and Judy Munsen keeps things bubbling throughout. Best of all, there's a sweet and simple good-natured quality to the whole show that's impossible to either resist or dislike. An extremely funny and entertaining riot.
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6/10
Okay little movie
Horst_In_Translation8 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
"It's Magic, Charlie Brown" is another Peanuts cartoon that runs for 24 minutes as they usually do and was made almost 35 years ago. As almost always, this one was nominated for an Emmy and director Phil Roman and writer Charles M. Schulz, who made many Peanuts films, will not have been too sad that they lost the Emmy for this one here as another Peanuts film took home the award. This little short film here is about magic as the title already implies. The first half is basically a magic show, in which Snoopy does everything wrong that he could have done wrong. A girl gets split into 3 parts, Linus' favorite blanket gets cut into little pieces and Charlie Brown becomes invisible. The latter is also the core of the second half of the movie. Charlie plays some pranks in his new state while Snoopy tries his best to make Charlie visible again. The final football scene was a highlight this time. Pretty funny. They did well in going full comedy with this one and not really including emotional aspects with which they have failed occasionally in the past for other Peanuts films. All in all, this is one of the better installments of the series and I recommend it.
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Good C.B. fun
kathsthe130 November 2003
Snoopy gets a magic book at the library & puts on a magic show. He's, "The Great Houndini." Some of his tricks work and some don't. He cuts up Linus' blanket & it should "magically" go back together, but it doesn't. Then he makes Charlie Brown invisible and can't change him back. The invisible C.B. screws with Lucy & actually kicks the football. Lucy tells Snoopy to make C.B. reappear. Somehow Snoopy gets "magical powers" to bring C.B. back & Lucy says he may not have kicked the ball - no one else saw it. Snoopy levitates Lucy & leaves her up there.

Good C.B. fun for all ages. A must see.
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6/10
Real Magic, Charlie Brown
CuriosityKilledShawn26 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Annoyed at Snoopy for just sleeping all day Charlie Brown gives him a library card and tells him to go educate himself. The book he comes home with is full of magic tricks which he practises live in front a bunch of Chuck's friends. Some of the tricks work, others don't. But once the show is over Chuck is turned invisible as some kind of weird side-effect. Now with the powers of invisibility Chuck's only desire is to kick a football without Lucy yanking it out of the way at the last minute, as she so often does.

I think a lot more could have been done with this story. As soon as Charlie Brown goes invisible he orders Snoopy to fix him. Why not have more fun playing jokes on people? There was a lot of potential here but it's mainly wasted. Fun though.
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10/10
Magical moments
drsayaz26 February 2003
I've always liked the Peanuts. The cold reality life is given new life in humorous animations. This is one of the best Charlie Brown shows I've seen. The one where he actually kicks the ball. Enjoyable and fun all the way through. Amazing.
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6/10
Classic Charlie Brown
Angels_Review11 March 2014
Warning: Spoilers
It starts out when Charlie Brown pretty much tells Snoopy to go learn something useful and Snoopy checks out a book on how to perform magic. It makes me laugh a bit that he was able to do some of the harder magic tricks perfectly, and yet the simple ones have problems. All the time, he is looking threw his book in the backstage. Then suddenly, Charlie Brown turns invisible. It makes things interesting since we get to see the scenery pretty nicely. Charlie also gets to actually kick the football though! There are a couple of interesting things that he gets to do that he doesn't normally get to because of the others around him.

The title of the book sometimes changes a bit but most everything else is pretty standard fair when it comes to the animation. Beautiful watercolor backgrounds against rather clean characters. Even how they do they show how Charlie Brown is invisible is pretty cool.

Voices again seem to be the same as all the other ones. They gave them the right voices to work for the characters.
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9/10
Snoopy the Magician
hellraiser722 October 2015
One of the things I always loved about the Charlie Brown specials were that they were always a surprise, you never really knew what the Pennuts gang were going to get into next. This is another of my favorite specials.

There really isn't a whole lot to say about this one it's basically about Snoopy learning magic, that's pretty much it but that's cool because it finally dove into one of the things I always loved as a kid magic tricks.

In a way the whole special plays out like a skit comedy as most of what happens is pretty random and all revolve around the subject magic. I don't want to give too much away but from what you can see Snoopy is obviously a magician in progress as he seems to be hit or miss at first with most of the magic tricks.

Two of my favorite parts of the special were seeing Snoopy perform a magic trick with Linus's blanket where it's the trick to cut it apart and then make it magically intact again. It is just fraking hilarious as we just see the reactions on Linus's face, he's literally going into a nervous breakdown; for a really smart guy Linus has got problems.

Another of course was Charlie Brown becoming invisible, throughout a whole third of the special it's focused on Charlie Brown despite not seeing him but it's just fun seeing Charlie Brown get into some antics and have fun with his invisibility. He even gets to do something that I've been waiting for years to happen and it's finally paid off.

Charlie and Snoopy are magically powered for fun.

Rating: 3 and a half stars
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9/10
Magical Snoopy
Rainey-Dawn11 December 2022
It's hard not to love The Peanuts Gang and they never seem to disappoint; as always the gang has a few magical surprises and laughs for the audience - this special has plenty of that.

Charlie Brown wants Snoopy to educate himself and sends his beagle to the library to get some books to read. Snoopy picks up a book on magic, learns some of it and then puts on a stage act for the gang. Our magician ends up turning Charlie invisible. Snoopy has problems trying to put Charlie back right. In the meantime, ol' Chuck manages to finally kick that football!

Really cute Peanuts special - worth watching as always!
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