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Note that this is an old review of the out-of-print Paramount Home Video DVD release of Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, retained for historical purposes. Please see here for a review of the new 2008 Warner Home Video release of Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown Deluxe Edition DVD.

More than two years after their first Peanuts DVD releases, Paramount has released an new Peanuts DVD. Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, released on January 7, 2003, actually includes three shows on the disc: the titular show along with two other love-themed shows, "You're in Love, Charlie Brown" and "It's Your FIrst Kiss, Charlie Brown." While the DVD packaging lists the latter two as "bonus features," on the DVD themselves they're given equal weight to the "main feature."

In "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown" (1975), Charlie Brown pines for Valentine's Day cards, Linus pines after Miss Othmar, and Sally pines after Linus, assuming that Linus's large box of chocolates is for her. All three stories reach their denouement at the school Valentine's card exchange. "Be My Valentine" isn't one of my favorite specials; while the theme of unrequited love is central to many Peanuts stories, humor seems to be lacking in this show and instead it comes across as depressing and a bit cruel, with only Snoopy and Woodstock providing occasional comic relief.

Next, in "You're in Love, Charlie Brown" (1967), Charlie Brown tries to work up the nerve to meet the Little Red-Haired Girl (or even get noticed by her!) during the last two days of the school year. Even though this show comes from the "classic" era of early Peanuts specials, it's not very well known - perhaps because unlike its contemporaries from the 60's, it has less of a central plot and is more of a string of sketches. Still, it has many enjoyable moments and some of the nicest art work of any of the shows. Watching the show again, I was struck by the similarity of "You're in Love" to 2002's "A Charlie Brown Valentine"--they are both episodic shows centered around Charlie Brown's attraction to the Little Red-Haired Girl... both even have a pencil-sharpening scene!

Giving the Little Red-Haired Girl a name and showing her on-screen makes "It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown" (1977) one of the more "controversial" Peanuts TV shows. This is officially the first time Heather, as she's named, was drawn--although if you watch the final scene of "You're in Love, Charlie Brown" carefully, you'll note that a crowd that rushes past Charlie Brown that is said to have the Little Red-Haired Girl in it actually has *two* red haired girls in it! Anyway, the special's story focuses on the homecoming football game (why does an elementary school have a homecoming game, one wonders?), where Charlie Brown and the gang take to the field, and afterwards, Charlie Brown must escort the Little Red-Haired Girl to the homecoming dance, which makes him more than a little nervous. Despite the somewhat questionable decision to put the Little Red-Haired Girl on screen, and yes, even have Charlie Brown kiss her, I've always enjoyed this episode - I especially liked Snoopy's gigs as a whirlybird and football referee, and yes, I even like Ed Bogas and Judy Munsen's music... for this episode, anyway.

After "It's Your First Kiss" first aired, many viewers called in and complained about Peppermint Patty's criticisms of Charlie Brown for failing to kick the football at critical points, even when he wasn't at fault (because as you might guess, Lucy pulls the ball away). So the producers decided to dub out several of Peppermint Patty's lines in these scenes, and all subsequent broadcast and video releases have featured those edits. Unfortunately, the DVD also retains them, so the show presented on the DVD is not exactly the same as when it first aired - but it is as the producers intend for it to be seen now. "Be My Valentine" and "You're In Love" are complete and unedited, however.

The shows are all presented in a 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio, as they were originally broadcast. The video quality of the DVD is excellent, as it was with the first round of Paramount's DVD releases. Most notably, the colors of all the episodes are very bright, almost too the point of being over saturated - but not quite. The shows are eye-popping, especially if you compare them to their videotape counterparts. There is no color bleeding, making everything look very clean. The backgrounds of "You're In Love, Charlie Brown," which feature multitudes of colorful flowers, look particularly good.

The pictures are also very sharp, although "Be My Valentine" looks a little softer than the others, but I believe this is more due to the animation style than the mastering. There are occasional dust specks and other blemishes, but they're minor and not distracting. I saw no compression artifacts. The worst flaw I noticed was a vertical scratch that appears for a couple of seconds early in "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown" - it's too bad this wasn't cleaned up. The masters used for the DVDs are the same cleaned masters created for the Paramount video releases back in the early 90's. While for the most part they're very good, "You're in Love, Charlie Brown" suffers some from the black lines of characters breaking up during scenes with a lot of motion, as the digital noise reduction and cleanup used when creating the masters removed them, and this is a little distracting if you examine the picture too closely like me! The other two shows, which seem to have been drawn with thicker lines, don't exhibit this problem.

The monaural audio quality is acceptable - nothing special, but probably an accurate representation of the original material, as these weren't big screen high budget theatrical releases. Again, as with the previous Peanuts DVD releases, the audio on the "Be My Valentine" DVD is encoded at a much softer volume than on most other DVDs - you have to crank the sound up quite a bit to listen to these shows. But once you do that, the voices and music are clear and there were no serious flaws.

Menus on the DVD are simple, attractive, and easy to use. Kids should have no problem navigating these, and honestly I wish more DVD menus were like them; it's obvious what you've selected, and it's pleasing to look at, and there are no excessive animated transitions (no animations at all, actually).

Extra features are one thing you won't find on this DVD. The only spoken language choice is English, and only English subtitles are offered. The one single "bonus feature" isn't a bonus, it's an insult. It's not even Peanuts related. Advertised as a "Charlotte's Web 2 Interactive Game," it's a useless, unchallenging choose-the-animal "game" whose sole goal seems to be to repeat the name of the movie as many times as possible in hopes that it will stick in children's brains so they'll go make their parents the new direct-to-video movie.

But leaving that aside, don't let the lack of bonus features stop you from buying this disk. The three Peanuts TV specials look wonderful, and the $19.95 list price is very affordable--the DVD should sell for around $15 in stores and on-line, less than you'd pay for buying three Peanuts specials on VHS. I'm pleased to have three more Peanuts shows in my DVD collection and I recommend the disc to all Peanuts fans. And we won't have to wait long for the next Peanuts disc - "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" along with "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown" is scheduled to be released March 4, 2003.