There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973)

I've tried in the past to do this one for Valentine's Day, seeing as how I've already done all of the Peanuts specials that are actually based around the holiday, as well as those with a similar theme, like You're in Love, Charlie Brown, Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown, and It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. But then, when I re-watched it, I realized that, despite the title, as well as how it does seem to take place in February, as it's mentioned that there are three more months of school left, it has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, and the subject of romance is only part of it. Thus, when you're now finally reading this review, Valentine's has already come and gone. In any case, this is another special that I knew nothing about when I first saw it on the Peanuts 1970's Collection Volume One DVD set, and could only guess at the plot. Upon seeing it, I was surprised to find it was mostly about the pressures of school, even for elementary students, with the main plot being about how Charlie Brown and some of his friends end up in a supermarket when they're supposed to be on a field trip to an art museum. It also focuses on Peppermint Patty's relationship with him, and notably introduces the character of Marcie to animation. And even though the special does focus mainly on the three of them, a fair number of the other Peanuts characters do also get the opportunity to shine, even if in brief moments. Overall, while not laugh out loud funny (though it does have its fair share of chuckle-worthy moments, to be sure), it is kind of unique and well-written, and it is nice to see something go right for Charlie Brown, for a change by the end.

There are three months left in the school year and everybody, both at Charlie Brown's and Peppermint Patty's school, is feeling the pressure, as they're swamped with homework assignments and various tests. While Peppermint Patty complains that, with all this work, there's no time for her to find any romance, Charlie Brown worries about salvaging his grades, which have dropped down to all C's. He then learns that his class is taking a field trip to an art museum, which they then have to write a report on; in order to keep from failing completely, he must get an A on this report. It turns out that Peppermint Patty and Marcie's class are going on the same field trip, and the night before, Marcie, worried that something will go wrong with ir, shows up at Patty's house early in the morning, as in 4:00 AM, so they can walk to school together. This causes Patty to get no sleep whatsoever and walk around in a daze. When they arrive at the museum, they meet up with Charlie Brown, Sally, and Snoopy, the latter of whom simply came along for the ride. They're so busy talking that they don't realize that everyone else has gone inside and they themselves end up going into the supermarket, which is right next door to the museum. Save for Marcie and Snoopy, none of them realize the mistake they've made. Meanwhile, in the museum, Linus and Lucy wonder what became of Charlie Brown as they roam about the building. Eventually, Patty's drowsiness gets the best of her and she and Charlie Brown sit down in an aisle, where she continually hints at her crush on him by insinuating that he likes her. At one point, he walks off, and Marcie and Sally find Patty sleeping by herself. Upon waking her up, Marcie suggests that Patty is in love with Charlie Brown, which she vehemently denies... within earshot of Charlie Brown himself. Now, not only is he depressed about his grades, especially when he learns that he wasn't in a museum, but Patty has to try to make up for insulting him.

Having directed not only the previous Peanuts special, You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown, but also the second feature film, Snoopy Come Home, both in 1972, Bill Melendez would naturally return to direct There's No Time for Love. However, the next special, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, would prove to be something of a turning point, as he would co-direct it with Phil Roman, and after that, Roman would be the sole director on a number of the specials leading into the 80's. In fact, save for 1978's What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!, which he, again, co-directed with Roman, Melendez wouldn't be the sole director on another special until 1982's A Charlie Brown Celebration. He wasn't completely removed from the franchise during this time, though, as he was still acting as a producer on them and would direct some small shorts featuring the characters, as well as the later feature films, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!), before going back to directing many of the specials himself in the later years. However, in a way, There's No Time for Love is the end of an era, as it's the last one in the initial run beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas where Melendez was himself the one and only director.

Like the other members of the Peanuts gang during the first act, Charlie Brown (voiced by Chad Webber) is really suffering from the pressures of school and is especially down when he learns that he got a C in everything, commenting, "I'm a straight 'blah' student." He also completely fumbles when he attempts to give a report, clumsily admitting that he never got around to doing it and finally yelling, "I throw myself upon the mercy of the court!" Following that, he confesses to Linus, "I worry about school a lot. I also worry about my worrying so much about school. My anxieties have anxieties." And then, he learns about the field trip to the art museum and how he must get an A on the report he's to write about it in order to keep from failing the entire course. Come the day of the field trip, he has to first deal with Sally complaining about having to go on one in the first place, then Peppermint Patty not so subtly hitting on him through reverse psychology, which distracts everyone and causes them to go into the supermarket instead of the museum. Never picking up on how they're in the wrong place, he gets stuck with Peppermint Patty, as she keeps inferring that he likes her. When she falls asleep in an aisle, he wanders away, still worrying about his grades, and is within earshot when Marcie asks Patty if she's in love with him and she denies it, calling him "boring," "dull," and "wishy-washy." Depressed, he walks out of the building and gets back on the bus, ignoring Patty when she runs after him, trying to apologize. Things get a little better when she invites him to come over and write his report along with her and Marcie, saying that if they work together, they might get a good grade on it. When Charlie Brown walks Marcie home afterward, she tells him that Patty actually does like him and what she said at the museum was a slip of the tongue, which only annoys him. But then, Marcie kisses him on the cheek on her doorstep, sending him in a blushing daze (and causing him to commit a major faux pas by calling up Patty and thanking her for the kiss). Once he sees Linus' photos from the art museum, he realizes that he was in the wrong place, but this is after he's already handed in his report. He's convinced that this will lead to him failing for sure, only for him to get the report back with an A, as well as a note from the teacher complimenting him on describing the museum through the "metaphor" of a supermarket.

Unlike Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty's (voiced by Christopher DeFaria) biggest concern over the influx of schoolwork is whether she'll have time to find a boyfriend. It's also obvious, especially to Marcie, that she has a crush on good old "Chuck," and is always inferring as much by suggesting that he likes her, which only puts Charlie Brown off. Speaking of Marcie, Patty is sure that the two of them will end up as buddies on the field trip and suggests she show up at her house that morning so they can walk to school together, only for her to show up at 4:00 AM. She tells Marcie to go home and come back a few hours later, but when she doesn't leave, as she says she can't go back to bed, Patty opts to let her stay over until it's time to go to school. As a result, Patty is drowsy and half-asleep throughout the field trip, and doesn't realize it when she, Marcie, Charlie Brown, Sally, and Snoopy end up in the supermarket instead of the museum. Eventually, it catches up with her and she sits down next to Charlie Brown in an aisle, continuing to infer that she likes him by insinuating that he's the one who has a crush on her. She dozes off and Charlie Brown goes elsewhere. She doesn't wake up until Marcie and Sally find her, and she wonders what happened to Charlie Brown. That's when Marcie asks if she's in love with him and Patty immediately exclaims, "Me? Me in love with Chuck? How could anybody ever be in love with boring, dull, wishy-washy old Chuck?" She then sees Charlie Brown wandering away, looking really sad, and realizes that he heard what she said. Desperate to salvage their friendship, she runs after him, yelling that she didn't mean it, but he gets on the bus and rides off, not paying attention to her. 

To try and smooth things over, she calls up Charlie Brown and has him come over so the two of them and Marcie can compare notes and do good on their reports. She continues to not so subtly flirt with him while they're doing so, having him hand her an eraser and then saying, "You touched my hand, Chuck." But later, after he's walked Marcie home and she's kissed him, Patty is indignant when Charlie Brown calls her up and thanks her for the kiss, prompting her to yell, "What goodnight kiss?!" She slams the phone down

and growls, "That Chuck! He's finally flipped!" At the end, as they're sitting under the same tree that they were at the beginning, she tells him, "Chuck, I want to apologize for saying that you're stupid and wishy-washy and everything. It's not easy for a girl to talk like this to a boy, you know." Charlie Brown responds, "I know. But I always used to think how nice it would be if that little red-haired girl would just come up to me and...", and that's all Patty can take, as she yells, strong enough to literally blow him away, "I can't stand you, Chuck!"

Marcie (voiced by James Ahrens) had only just recently been introduced in the comic strip when she made her first animated appearance here, and she immediately establishes her personality: a bit shy, very awkward, and not understanding a number of basic, everyday things, along with her habit of calling Peppermint Patty "sir," much to her annoyance. Like Charlie Brown, she dreads the field trip, but more because she's worried about everything that could possibly go wrong: "What if I get sick? What if I get lost? I hear you have to bring your lunch on a field trip. What about that, sir? What if I get out there and discover I left my lunch on the bus? What if I get on the wrong bus, and I end up downtown or something?" To calm her nerves, Peppermint Patty tells her about how the buddy-system is used on field trips and that she'll probably be her buddy. She also tells Marcie to come by her home that morning so they can walk to school together. That proves to be a big mistake, as when Marcie wakes up in the middle of the night, she thinks she overslept and runs over to Peppermint Patty's house, where it turns out to be 4:00 in the morning. Though Patty tells her to go home and come back later, Marcie opts to just stay with her, saying she can't go back to bed. During the "field trip," she's the only one who suspects they're in a supermarket (the one hint here of her true intelligence). When they come upon a big stack of tomato cans, which everyone else thinks is a sculpture, and describes it as such, Peppermint Patty admonishes her, saying, "What do you mean supermarket? That's pop art. What's the matter with you, Marcie? Don't you know pop art when you see it?" And when she and Sally are in the meat section, which the latter thinks is a display of dinosaur bones, Marcie, again, calls it out for what it really is. 

More than anything else, Marcie sees how Peppermint Patty likes Charlie Brown, and when she ends up insulting him, Marcie offers to come up with something to help. Notably, that night, when the three of them get together to compare notes and write their reports, Marcie, as Charlie Brown is walking her home, tells him that Patty really does like him. And when she kisses him goodnight, she tells him, "If you don't want that to be from me, Chuck, think of it as being a goodnight kiss from Peppermint Patty,

because I think she likes you." That leads him into mistakenly thanking Patty for the kiss. And at the end, when Patty blows up at Charlie Brown and sends him flying, Marcie shows up and says, "Well, sir, you said the wrong thing again, didn't you?" Patty then asks, "Kid, I want to ask you something. How come you're always calling me 'sir' when I keep asking you not to? Don't you realize how annoying that can be?", and Marcie, after thinking for a second, responds, "No, ma'am," which Patty doesn't seem to like the sound of, either.

Linus (voiced by Stephen Shea) and Lucy (voiced by Robin Kohn) spend nearly all of their scenes together (Schroeder, for the first time in any of these specials, isn't here, so Lucy likely doesn't have anywhere else to go). Their first scene is one of the special's funniest moments, where Linus lays out this problem, "A man has a daughter and a son. The son is three years older than the daughter. In one year, the man will be six times as old as the daughter is now; and in ten years, he'll be fourteen years older than the combined ages of his children. What is the man's present age?", and Lucy just stares at him and says, "I'm sorry. We are unable to complete your call. Please check the number and dial again." Shortly afterward, as Linus is doing his homework, he complains, "New math is too much for me." Lucy tells him, "You'll get on to it. It just takes time," and he responds, "Not me. I'll never get on to it. How can you do new math problems with an old math mind?" Notably, unlike Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Snoopy, Linus and Lucy manage to go into the art museum and often wonder where the former is. At one point, Lucy thinks she sees Charlie Brown, but it turns out to be a sculpture with a big, round sphere that looks a lot like his head. Lucy also complains about how the pictures, "Don't move," adding, "I'm not used to looking at pictures that don't move or have commercials." She then expects to see "Ramona Lisa" and tells Linus not to have any fun, as the trip is supposed to be "educational." Afterward, when the two of them and Charlie Brown are going over the pictures that Linus took at the museum, the latter realizes he was at the wrong place the whole time and feels he's doomed. But when he learns he got an A, and was actially the only one in his class who got one on his report, Linus is more than happy for him.

Sally (voiced by Hilary Momberger) is especially suffering from her school workload during the first act. The special starts with her waking up in the morning, realizing her alarm clock didn't go off, and as she and Charlie Brown walk to school afterward, he, of all people, talks about how she's so uptight and asks her why she doesn't just relax. Cut to her classroom, and she's literally standing up in her seat, asking, "Who can relax?" Throughout the first act, you see her, among other things, writing a report on agriculture, specifically on melon farming (she writes, "Melons have to be planted between May 15th and June 5th. I don't know what to do if you happen to be out of town. I'm glad I'm not a melon farmer,"), making a number of random guesses as to the answer to a problem (after spitting out various numbers between "2" and "12," she comes out and asks the teacher, "Do you have the feeling that I'm guessing?"), and, when asked by the teacher, "Who was the father of Henry IV?", getting so aggravated that she blurts out, "I could not possibly care less!" She then realizes what she just said and quickly apologizes, telling the teacher, "That was just a gut reaction." Like Charlie Brown, she's not thrilled about the field trip, but for very different reasons. As the two of them walk out of the house and to the bus stop, she rants, "I don't know why we have to go on field trips. Why can't we stay in school? Why should we bother the outside world? I think field trips are invented by school custodians to get us out of the building so they can clean it. Do you know what going on a field trip means? It means we ride about 10,000 miles on a bus and we all get sick." Once they're on the bus, she thinks to herself, "So, here I am, on a school bus with the whole class, going on a field trip. I'll probably get sick. I shoulda stayed home! That's what I shoulda done! I can see the headlines now: 'FIVE-YEAR OLD GIRL HIJACKS SCHOOL BUS!.'" She then actually yells aloud, "'Take me home!', she shouted," and then thinks back to herself, "Rats." When they finally get to the museum, Sally is unwilling to go in, but Charlie Brown, not wanting her to get lost, drags her inside and they wind up in the supermarket. In there, she mistakes a pile of tomato cans for a sculpture and the meat section for a display of dinosaur bones. After she and Marcie find Peppermint Patty snoozing in the aisle, Sally disappears until the penultimate scene, when she's walking home with Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy.

While he's not along for the field trip, Franklin (voiced by Todd Barbee) appears early on, sitting in front of Peppermint Patty in class, and the two of them have some nice back-and-forth about their assignments. When Patty gripes about having to do a science project, Franklin says, "I'm going to do mine on the various kinds of metals in the earth and how each has affected the progress of mankind." Patty retorts, "Maybe I'll do one on stomachaches." The second time we see them, Franklin is reading a book and tells Patty, "It's a book on psychology. From what I understand, it seems to be pretty good." However, Patty tells him, "Forget it, Franklin. No book on psychology can be any good if you can understand it." In their third scene, there's a switch, as Patty tells Franklin, "We're going to have to learn the metric system, Franklin. By the time we grow up, the metric system will probably be official. One inch is 2.54 centimeters, one foot is 0.3048 meters, and one mile is 1.609 kilometers," and he responds, "I'll never measure anything again, as long as I live." And in their final scene, Franklin complains about a problem he can't understand and Patty tells him, "Just put down 'eleven,' Franklin, and don't worry about it. That's what I did. X is almost always eleven, and Y is almost always nine. One thing I've learned about algebra: don't take it too seriously."

Snoopy (voiced by Bill Melendez) appears briefly during the first act, having sneaked into school using his Joe Cool persona. He lifts his sunglasses and winks at Violet, who promptly slaps the crap out of him and goes back to her work. He comes along with Charlie Brown and Sally on the field trip, and goes into the supermarket with them. Since they pass by a "NO DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you expect him to immediately get thrown out, but that never happens. Instead, he puts on an apron and starts checking out some customers, as well as inspects some of the fruits and vegetables, as one of Vince Guaraldi's "Joe Cool" songs plays on the soundtrack. Snoopy throws a tantrum when a tomato is easily squashed in his hand, is disgusted when he finds a can of cat-food among a bunch of groceries, and laughs while reading a magazine that's about housebreaking a pet. At one point, he pushes a shopping cart full of groceries (the bag he tried to put in it burst) into a line of them, only to get his foot stuck and then get knocked out the door. That's how Linus and Lucy find him when they come out of the museum, though neither of them seem to realize he's stuck. So, when they board the bus, he just drags the cart with him and takes it home.

In terms of animation, while There's No Time for Love doesn't have any real stand-out moments, you can still see, like in scenes where Charlie Brown freaks out in class, Marcie runs out of her room and house, and Snoopy complains while "working" at the supermarket, how the movements of the characters are much more fluid than they were when the specials began. But what really caught my eye was the technical sophistication of the moving background in some shots, specifically the exterior nighttime scenes. When the characters are walking to and from school

during the day, the entire background moves along with them, as per usual, as do objects in the foreground, like trees. But when Marcie rushes to Peppermint Patty's house in the middle of the night and when Charlie Brown walks her home following their studying together, the immediate background of the houses behind them moves, but the stars, clouds, and moon up in the sky remain still, as they would in real life. It may not seem like much to get excited about as I'm describing it, or from these static screenshots, but it's a very sophisticated technique that I don't remember seeing in the previous Peanuts cartoons or, if it was, it didn't stand out as much. 

Speaking of the backgrounds and the design of the environments, while there are the usual simplistic ones with little to no detail (like the various classrooms you see during the first seven or so minutes), some are actually quite well-designed. Besides the lovely backgrounds for the exterior daytime scenes and the tree that Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty sit under a couple of times (I would complain that the grass and leaves are too green for the time of year this is supposed to be, but whatever), the nighttime ones are, in my opinion, some of the

best seen in any of these specials since It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, with the look of the surrounding neighborhood and the full moon in the background when Charlie Brown is walking Marcie home. Interior-wise, the most elaborately designed are the art museum and the supermarket. The former, naturally, has all of its paintings and unique sculptures, as well as one shot of a bunch of kids gathered around the piece of art that Lucy initially mistakes for Charlie Brown. The supermarket,

meanwhile, is much more colorful than you might expect, with the fruits and vegetables section and the banners hanging from the ceiling, and there are a couple of detailed overhead shots showing the big stacks of cans and the aisles with banners that read "Sale" over them. Other interiors, like those of Marcie and Peppermint Patty's homes, give a hint of what their respective home-lives are like. While we never get a good look at the outside of Marcie's home, and don't see much when she gets up and runs out that

night, it's clear from the big staircase she runs down and the bookcase we partially see to its left that her house is quite large and her family is fairly well-to-do. Peppermint Patty's house, which we do see the outside of, is obviously more of a standard, middle-class home, and her bedroom is decorated with football team flags, an actual football, and so on, indicating how much she's into sports.

It goes without saying that, both in terms of drama and comedy, the Peanuts always work best when they're dealing with real-life issues that anyone can relate to, and that's certainly true of There's No Time for Love, which deals with the pressure and anxiety that comes with being in school. The first eight or so minutes alone get into it perfectly, with Sally waking up to find her alarm clock didn't go off, then fretting about school to the point where she's literally standing in her seat in class, Peppermint Patty complaining that she doesn't have any time for romance (that was

definitely true of the private high school I went to), and the kids each dealing with their own, individual schoolwork and anxieties, with Charlie Brown himself worrying about how he's gotten nothing but C's. Besides the moments I've already mentioned, you have scenes at school like Sally attempting to do show-and-tell, only for her buildup to take too long and the teacher to send her back to her desk, as she grumbles, "All the life has gone out of show-and-tell,"; Sally later reading her schoolwork, "Sets. One to one matching. Equivalent sets. Non-equivalent sets.

Sets of one. Sets of two. Renaming two. Subjects. Joining sets. Number. Sentences. Placeholders," until she finally breaks and yells, "All I wanna know is how much is two and two!"; Peppermint Patty, like Sally before her, confidently answering a question, only to get it wrong and comment, "The jury will please disregard that last statement,"; and Peppermint Patty, after reading a math problem just as tough as Sally's, commenting, "Well, I knew it would happen

sooner or later... My education has ground to a halt." And I, for one, can definitely relate to Charlie Brown fretting about having to do a report following a field trip, as I was never good at that kind of thing and wanted to die every time it came up.

In the midst of this, when Charlie Brown asks him, Linus sums up school in about the best way possible: "I think that the purpose of going to school is to get good grades, so then you can go on to high school; where the purpose is to study hard, so you can get good grades, so you can go to college. And the purpose of going to college is so you can get good grades, so you can go on to graduate school; and the purpose of that is to work hard and get good grades, so we can get a job and be successful, so we can get married and have kids, so we can send them to grammar school, to get good grades, so they can go to high school, to get good grades, so they can go to college and work hard..." Charlie Brown then lets out an exasperated, "Good grief!"

While it is similar to Play It Again, Charlie Brown, in that it starts out with a bunch of randomness before getting into an actual plot, I think There's No Time for Love does it better, in that the plot actually comes around while we're still in the first act, and the aforementioned randomness is better connected and builds up to it. However, in terms of humor, I think the section at the museum and supermarket is kind of lacking. While it is funny that they think they're in the museum, are shocked that it seems to be selling off part of its collection so it can stay in business (Charlie

Brown says, "They must be desperate. They're practically giving this stuff away!"), and think that stacks of cans and the meat market are exhibits, it starts to run of steam; fortunately, though, they don't spend much more time there than necessary. And, while certainly harmless, the sequence with Snoopy working in the store and getting his foot caught in the shopping cart feels like it was put in to pad out the runtime just a little bit, as it serves no purpose besides giving him at least one stand out scene. I wish they

instead devoted more time to Linus and Lucy wandering around the actual museum, as I thought the little bit of that we do get was rather funny in and of itself. But once that section is gone by, I feel that the rest of it runs smoothly, as I like the comedy with Peppermint Patty trying to flirt with Charlie Brown, only for him to drive her up the wall with his obliviousness, and I think it's both funny and nice that Charlie Brown ends up getting the only A in the whole class on his report, with his dumb luck being something that the teacher thought was a brilliantly unique way of looking at things.

As he often did with the music, Vince Guaraldi came up with a title theme for There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown that you first hear when the actual title comes up and which you hear sporadically throughout the actual cartoon, in different versions. You first hear it in a sort of synthesizer version, then in a combination piano/guitar version for the scene where Charlie Brown and Linus are walking home from school; an electric keyboard version for when Peppermint Patty calls Charlie Brown up about their working together on their field trip reports and on through their working together, him walking Marcie home, and then calling Peppermint Patty up about that goodnight kiss; a brass version during the last scene under the tree; and a final, high-energy guitar version for the ending credits. Another memorable part of the score is called Pitkin County Blues, which plays during the montage of the kids dealing with the onslaught of schoolwork at the beginning, and perfectly captures the frenzied, stressed out mood they find themselves in. There's also this theme called African Sleigh Ride, which plays during the latter part of the kids wandering around both the museum and supermarket, and which has a sort of Christmas vibe to it, with the sound of sleigh bells in the background, but with a smooth, mellow jazz beat on top of it. And as he'd done for You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown, Guaraldi himself sings a "Joe Cool" song for Snoopy. It's the same melody as it was before, only the lyrics are different, talking about how he's working in a supermarket and telling him to be careful of the manager, to get the prices right, and so on. Besides using the classic Linus and Lucy theme a couple of times and Peppermint Patty's theme from before, you also hear some of the music that the combo from Play It Again, Charlie Brown played when Charlie Brown, Sally, and Snoopy go to the bus stop and arrive at their destination.

In conclusion, while There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown may not have been appropriate for Valentine's Day, despite its title, it is very enjoyable. The humor and situations are both fairly funny and very relatable to anyone who was ever stressed out about school, the character of Marcie has a very nice first appearance, all of the major characters here manage to have their standout moments, the animation is still good, the art direction and backgrounds are nicely-detailed and even very colorful in some cases, the music score is memorable, as usual, and despite the typical hurdles he's go through, it's nice that something good happens to Charlie Brown at the end. While the humor during the sequence where the kids are at the museum/supermarket does start to wear a tad thin, it doesn't overstay its welcome, and the story structure is similar to Play It Again, Charlie Brown, only done better. Definitely a Peanuts special you may want to check out if you haven't already.