Popeye is a super-strong, spinach-scarfing sailor man who’s searching for his father. During a storm that wrecks his ship, Popeye washes ashore and winds up rooming at the Oyl household, where he meets Olive. Before he can win her heart, he must first contend with Olive’s fiancé, Bluto.
Popeye (1980) Movie Review
This big-budget musical comedy, which was based on the popular Popeye the Sailor Man character that has appeared in comic strips and cartoons since the Depression era, was such an embarrassing failure that it’s astonishing the film’s creators were able to maintain their careers thereafter.
The movie landed actor Robin Williams in “movie jail,” which lasted until he took a dramatic turn in The World According to Garp. Williams chose this film as his first big-screen starring role after dominating television with Mork & Mindy (1982). And for director Robert Altman, who should have known better, Popeye destroyed whatever goodwill was left over from hits like M*A*S*H (1970) and Nashville (1975). After Popeye, Altman spent more than ten years producing low-budget oddities before making a comeback to the A-list with The Player (1992).
Despite the fact that some people think Popeye is a quirky gem, most spectators are likely to find the film awkward, uninteresting, and ridiculous from the very beginning. Williams plays Popeye using prosthetics on his arms that give Williams the appearance of smuggling hams under the skin beneath his wrists and his elbows amid absurdly intricate production design, including an entire beach village made from scratch.
Williams (badly) sings arty little songs written by the eccentric rock artist Harry Nilsson, much like everyone else around him. While offbeat actors like Paul Dooley, Bill Irwin, and Paul Smith (best known for playing a would-be rapist in 1978’s Midnight Express) personify one-joke characters with performances of astonishing monotony, Shelley Duvall, an Altman regular, plays Olive Oyl as a mess of goofy pratfalls and shrill noises.
All of these tools are used to forward a tedious plot that has Popeye vying with the obnoxious Bluto (Smith) for Olive’s hand, Olive and Popeye adopting Swee’Pea, an orphan, and Popeye reuniting with his long-lost father, Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston). There is also a significant octopus battle and, of course, loads of spinach.
There’s nothing more lifeless than a failed attempt at genre-splicing, despite the fact that criticising Altman and his partners for attempting to merge unique components may appear narrow-minded. Popeye, written by humorist Jules Feiffer, who, like Altman and Nilsson, takes a casual approach to comedy, is obviously trying to be both funny and satirical at the same time. Instead, it’s too slow and dull for intelligent viewers and too bizarre for ordinary ones. That there hasn’t been a film quite like Popeye—an arthouse cartoon, if you will—is true, but that’s not to suggest it’s a good thing.
