How Peanuts' first special in a decade stacks up to the classics

Los Angeles Times

Apple TV+'s Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, the first Peanuts special since 2011, dropped on Friday. " In the new special, the existential crisis is transferred to, of all people, Lucy Van Pelt, the strip’s resident antagonist, who interprets her grandmother’s failure to come for Christmas as a sign she is not lovable; in a panic, she determines to throw a big New Year’s Eve party to prove otherwise," says Robert Lloyd, adding: "Although it lacks the handmade charm of the Lee Mendelson-produced, Bill Melendez-directed specials of old, the animation, by Canada’s WildBrain Studios, deftly captures (Charles) Schulz’s line, rounding out characters with subtle lighting effects, so that they handily inhabit a world appropriately more 2-D than three. Slapstick sequences, which Schulz had a gift for suggesting on the page, are smoothly executed."