It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown
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It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown is a 1984 TV special, featuring Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts characters. The show features, parodies of the early 1980s breakdancing craze, the movies Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Flashdance (1983), and a number of popular top 40 hit songs of the early 1980s.
[edit] Plot
The story begins at a big football game where Snoopy wins a game from Peppermint Patty's team. That night, Snoopy gets out a radio and becomes Flashbeagle (with an ouftit inspired by Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" look: headband, sweats, and so on).
That next day, Peppermint Patty gets in a lot of mix-ups in class, including getting her hair caught in her binder (with her report trapped inside). When Patty falls asleep, Marcie drags her up to the front of the room to serve as a visual aid in the class's study of the human head. Later, during gym class, Patty leads the other kids in a workout routine to her song "I'm In Shape." The song contains references to the cheerleader chants in the 1982 Toni Basil hit song "Mickey"; Patty spontaneously breaks into a chant to inspire a visibly exhausted Charlie Brown to keep up the pace: "Hey Chuck, you know how, get in shape and do it now, hey Chuck!"
Charlie Brown and his sister Sally host a party for all the neighborhood kids at the Brown household that night. Sally is fixated on getting Linus, her "sweet baboo", to dance with her, but Linus resists. The kids play a game of Simon Says, which soon turns into "Lucy Says" ("Lucy's the Boss, so listen to Lucy, and here's what Lucy says"). Charlie Brown very nearly wins the game, but Lucy gets him out at the last second; Snoopy is the winner.
Meanwhile, Snoopy helps serve fruit punch to the guests, but Charlie Brown discovers to his horror that Snoopy has been randomly sipping some of the punch glasses through a straw. To make matters worse, Lucy comes by for a drink and takes one of the cups that contain Snoopy's Dog Germs. Lucy, who is totally unsuspecting of what Snoopy did to her drink, reprimands a grossed-out Charlie Brown for making such strange faces, until finally Charlie Brown can't take it any more and walks away. Finally, Pig-Pen leads the kids in the square dance-like "Pig Pen Hoedown."
The next day, Charlie Brown reprimands Snoopy, calling him useless and lazy and informing him that there are other dogs who do a lot more than he does, like herd sheep. That evening, Snoopy dresses up for the big moment, the dance hall performance. After strutting around the neighborhood, he finds a group of kids and dances for them to wild applause, accompanied by the song Flashbeagle (inspired by Michael Sembello's Flashdance soundtrack hit "Maniac").
Three days later, Sally takes Snoopy to one of her "Show and Tell" sessions at school. Inside the classroom, everything is fine until someone turns on a boombox and "Maniac" begins to play, and the classroom becomes an impromptu disco. Sally is mortified at first, but eventually joins in the fun. After school, Charlie Brown insists he should change Snoopy's behavior when Sally says, "You just leave him alone. That's the first time I've ever got an A in Show And Tell."
[edit] Production
Bill Melendez explained that the dancing Snoopy in the club scene was done by a process called rotoscoping where the character is drawn over live action pictures. The dancing model Marine Jahan was chosen to do scenes were Snoopy was dancing in the special. The animators rotoscoped live action pictures of Jahan to Snoopy in order to make these scenes.
Charles Schulz's 12-year old daughter Jill was said to have inspired the "She's In Shape" sequence when Schulz drew images of her aerobicizing and incorporated them into Peppermint Patty's dance routine. Today, Jill is a professional dancer and acrobatic rollerskater.
[edit] Voice Actors & Their Characters
Brad Kesten: Charlie Brown
Stacy Ferguson A.K.A. Fergie : Sally Brown
Gini Holtzman: Peppermint Patty (character & singing voice)
Heather Stoneman: Lucy Van Pelt
Jessica Lee Smith: Lucy Van Pelt (singing voice)
Jeremy Schoenberg: Linus Van Pelt
Bill Melendez: Snoopy and Woodstock
| Preceded by “What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?” |
Peanuts television specials | Followed by “Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown” |
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