Kids & Adults Can Learn A Lot From The Original Charlie Brown Movie

“Nothing ever seems to go right for me.”

“The harder I try, the worse I get.”

“I just can’t seem to do anything right.”

This isn’t the start of a parenting article about kids battling intrusive thoughts. Not exactly, anyway. Above are quotes from A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the first animated movie starring the Peanuts cast, which debuted on Dec. 4, 1969. Fifty-five years later, those phrases remain familiar not only to anyone with kids in their lives but also to adults who confront similar sentiments on a daily basis.

The Peanuts comics are one of those unusual newspaper strips where readers can understand it on a completely different level as an adult than how they interpreted it as an adolescent. Its chronically depressed lead, Charlie Brown, and cast of characters waxed poetic about philosophy through a child’s perspective for 50 years until creator Charles Schulz retired (passing away on the night before the final strip ran). The funny, melancholic, and heartwarming shorts always made audiences think, often about topics that may have affected them more than they liked to admit.

There were dozens of TV specials and movies that came during and after Schulz’s lifetime, all of varying quality. A Boy Named Charlie Brown often feels left out of the conversation, yet it might be the most startingly relevant and impactful of the lot. That’s because it dealt with a universal topic that people of all ages frequently confront — failure. Generations after this movie’s release, this fear remains in so many of us, so perhaps it’s time to see what a 55-year-old animated film can teach us about overcoming this unyielding mental threat.

What’s A Boy Named Charlie Brown about?

Whether it’s disastrous kite runs, getting clobbered in the first baseball game of the season, or missing another football that Lucy pulled away before it can be kicked, poor Charlie Brown feels destined to lose.

On a whim, Charlie enters the school spelling bee — and surprises himself by winning! Unfortunately for him, he’s in for another shock, as he’s now qualified to compete on the national level against other schools. With the pressure turned up, Charlie finds himself on the grandest spelling bee stage of them all, hoping to take home the championship and prove the naysayers (and himself) wrong.

Spoiler: In classic Peanuts fashion, Charlie messes up in the final round, incorrectly spelling “beagle” to the dismay of his schoolmates and Snoopy. Disappointed and depressed, Charlie returns home defeated and vows never to leave again. Linus discovers him in his darkened room and sympathizes with his best friend, reminding him that even though he tried his best and still lost, “The world didn’t come to an end.”

Charlie picks himself up, heads outside, and realizes Linus is right. While the movie ends with Charlie once again missing another football held by Lucy, it signifies ole Chuck won’t be giving up anytime soon.

Good grief

During the movie, Charlie Brown seeks help in dealing with his mental dilemma by reaching out to a professional: perpetual antagonist Lucy Van Pelt. Instead of solving his issues, the doctor (whose credentials are questionable) lists the many flaws of her classmate, which does little to help his fragile state of mind.

Charlie has been diagnosed with all sorts of things by actual therapists and psychologists, ranging from being neurotic to having avoidant personality disorder. A component that feeds into so many of these traits is anxiety, which shows itself in the film through Charlie’s irrational fear of rejection. This dysphoria lives inside people with poor self-esteem — like Charlie Brown — keeping them safe through various means of emotional self-sabotage.

There is no singular answer to defeating those voices in your head, as embodied in the film by a derisive group of girls whom Charlie calls “one of his many detractors.” Yet, there’s another voice that always shines through the darkness, and that is Linus Van Pelt. Armed with his “spiritual tourniquet” of a blanket, Linus offers effervescent wisdom that still makes sense decades later.

The Doctor Is In

Linus constantly reminds his pal there is more to learn from losing than winning, and the power of his final statement, “the world didn’t come to an end,” can’t be said enough. It’s similar to the message from a Bluey episode titled “The Show,” where Bingo repeatedly makes mistakes that she thinks ruins everything. Her mum, Chilli, teaches her daughter a checklist: “Have a little cry, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going! The show must go on!”

Kids live in a world of tangible and existential dread. So do adults, but we have tools to manage it better. The average child hasn’t learned those coping mechanisms yet, and many adults who have aren’t always able to effectively employ them. It’s easy to feel trapped by these low feelings and little disappointments of everyday life that pile up until they overwhelm a person, and the best way to overcome them is this simple lesson of resilience. It’s been said in so many different ways by different people, and they’re all correct. It’s simply a matter of being reminded, and having those positive thoughts reinforced to drown out the doubting voices within.

That’s just one reason why A Boy Named Charlie Brown holds up 55 years later, and there are plenty more making it worth a rewatch. It’s a timeless cartoon that will always speak to generations young or old with one absolute truth — no matter what bad things happen to you, the world didn’t come to an end, and there is always another football to be kicked.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown is streaming on Paramount Plus, Roku, and Amazon among other platforms.

This article was originally published on scarymommy.com.