Peanuts, based on the beloved cartoons by Charles Schulz, has been beautifully rendered in CGI, though looking at the trailer, I honestly can’t see a pressing reason why (other than virtually all American animation has gone the way of the computer). The characters themselves were never terribly distinctive–visually speaking–as cartoons, so it’s no surprise their CGI versions aren’t either.

Apparently they’re rendered so faithfully to the cartoons that it makes me wonder why they didn’t stick with that format in the first place.

While Popeye works better in CGI because the cartoon itself was always a bit odd and surreal, and if the test trailer is any indication, that weirdness has transferred over to the movie relatively intact.