Film · Prime Video · 2015

The Peanuts Movie

Failure without cruelty. A boy who keeps his word. For a house.

Charlie Brown's disasters are public and his kindness is private, which is the right ratio. He will not take a prize he did not earn. The film thinks that is the point, and it is. Snoopy's air battle is a daydream, clearly marked as one, so the fantasy does not eat the schoolyard.

There is no villain but embarrassment. A house that is tired of stories where the awkward child must become cruel to survive can put this on without a speech afterward. The speech is already in it. He returns the test. He dances badly. He is still Charlie Brown.

The eight

Industry
7/10
He studies, he practices the dance, he does the assignment. The work is the joke and the honor.
Household
8/10
Siblings, a dog, a neighborhood of children. No one is abandoned for a punchline.
Piety
4/10
No creed is named. Decency is practiced as if it were one.
Courage
8/10
The brave act is handing back a score that is not his.
Republic
7/10
A small town of children with rules, and a boy who keeps them when it costs first place.
Temperance
8/10
Wanting the girl does not license a lie.
Truth
9/10
The returned test is the whole moral.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands a child a picture of losing well.

Live historicallyPraise one child for finishing a hard thing badly and honestly, not for winning it.

Film · Prime Video · 2006

Charlotte's Web

Friendship, a farm, and a death that is not a betrayal. One of the true ones.

Wilbur is a spring pig, which means he is scheduled to die, and Charlotte spends her silk to stop it. She succeeds. She also dies, because that is what spiders do, and the film does not cheat this into a reunion. Fern grows up and starts to look away from the barn, which is also true, and also a grief.

E. B. White's story is one of the few that trusts a child with mortality without using it as a thrill. Watch this version for that trust. The famous words in the web are not marketing. They are a friend spending her life.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A farm with chores, a fair, a spider's actual craft.
Household
8/10
Fern, a pig, a barn household. Growing up pulls her toward the boy and away from the pen.
Piety
5/10
No sermon. A created order in which things die.
Courage
8/10
Charlotte works until she is done. Wilbur keeps the egg sac.
Republic
6/10
A fair, a farm, a community that will kill a pig without malice.
Temperance
7/10
Appetite is the farmer's calendar. Friendship interrupts it once.
Truth
9/10
Death is not softened into a nap.
Stewardship
9/10
She saves him and leaves him her children. That is the whole charge.

Live historicallyTell a child the truth about a good thing that does not last, and do not rush past it.