TV Reviews : Tonight’s ‘Charlie Brown’ Not Much of a Tribute

“You Don’t Look 40, Charlie Brown,” which airs tonight at 8 on Channels 2 and 8, continues the dubious television tradition of assembling B-list celebrities to “honor” a cartoon character more interesting and famous than they are. Michelle Lee, Desiree Goyette and David Benoit are among those who offer minor league homage to Charles Schulz and “Peanuts.”

Although written, produced and directed by Schulz’s longtime associate, Lee Mendelson, “You Don’t Look 40” frequently misinforms. The program celebrates “25 years of animation,” and the 1965 special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” is described as “bringing movement and voices” to the strip. Actually, the first animation of the “Peanuts” characters was done almost a decade earlier for a series of commercials for the Ford Falcon.

Host Michelle Lee speaks tenderly of Schulz drawing “at this lonely easel,” but the “easel” is really a drafting table. She also informs the audience that “Charles Schulz has often been a bell-ringer for our thoughts and imagination,” when she means bellwether . Didn’t anyone bother to proofread this script?

Brief clips of an interview with Schulz are interspersed with long montages of animation from various CBS specials (the four “Peanuts” features receive scant mention). Accompanying the montages are some wincingly terrible songs: Not even Snoopy in his guise of the author of “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night” would try to rhyme “Sherlock Holmes” with “poems.” A “rock video” of David Benoit performing a song that Vince Guaraldi wrote for an early special showcases Benoit’s limited abilities as a pianist, but tells the viewer nothing about Schulz or his comic strip.

In addition to its staggering popularity, “Peanuts” ranks among the best and most influential strips in the history of the comics: Schulz almost single-handedly revolutionized the graphic look and style of humor in American newspaper strips. Many of the most talented artists working in the medium today, including Bill Watterson, Garry Trudeau, Berke Breathed and Matt Groening, have paid tribute to Schulz’s influence on their work. “You Don’t Look 40” doesn’t even try to explain what made “Peanuts” so special. Charles Schulz, Charlie Brown and the million of “Peanuts” fans deserve better.