Watch new clip from Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie

The film, which revisits the classic beloved comic strip characters created by Charles M. Schulz – including Charlie Brown, his dog Snoopy and best friend Linus, and Linus’ opinionated sister, Lucy, among a host of others – brings to the silver screen all of the warmth and humor of the original newspaper strip and the classic television specials of the 1960s.

I was a huge fan of the cartoon growing up, while the comic strip by Charles M. Schulz is still one of the most loved of all time.

Co-written by Schulz’s son Craig and grandson Bryan (along with Cornelius Uliano), “Peanuts” is technically an update, spiffed up by computer animation and incidental 3-D. You want to make sure you’re not making it tonally something it’s not.

While his father didn’t have the creative oversight of the TV specials, his family did have that for the new film. He’s the counterpoint to Lucy’s aggressive narcissism, a demonstration of Schulz’s idea that Charlie Brown wasn’t just a character, but that he had character.

During a year and a half of research, director Steve Marino took a walking tour of the cartoonist’s St. Paul neighborhood, carefully viewing everything from the ball field to the houses’ three-step concrete walk-ups.

Schulz said he’s pleased by the attention the film is generating, “but really, the essence of “Peanuts” can only be found in the comic strip – not in toys and products and so forth”.

In fact, it may be a long while before a follow-up follows.

Hadley points to the movie’s intelligence, Noah says its characters are like most kids (“there’s the shy one, the outgoing one”) and Francesca and Mar Mar say they didn’t notice that there’s no technology in it, until someone pointed it out.

Schulz, who worked for eight years on an uphill climb to get “The Peanuts Movie” made, wants to touch a new generation and honor his dad’s work: “He drew this thing for 50 years”, says Schulz, who admits that the new movie purposely has characters that reflect real people and real life. It’s not a franchise by any means.