Topic: Popeye

[middlenamewayne]

I’m probably going to regret this, but I just bought the Robin Williams movie during my lunch hour today. The DVD was on sale at J&R for only $4.79, so I figured what the heck!

Four geniuses (Jules Feiffer, Robert Altman, Robin Williams, Harry Nilsson) got together and the best they could manage was "close but no Segar"...

I most definitely did NOT regret picking up the first box set of the complete Fleisher Popeye cartoons at Big Lots for $3! (I wish I'd bought 20 copies!) John K. of Ren & Stimpy fame was heavily involved in these box sets and they are utterly gorgeous and lovingly packed to the poop-deck with fantastic bonus featurettes -- if a Stooges box set was made with even 50% of the quality of the Popeye boxes it would be cause for celebration!

  - mnw

[shemps#1]

My cable and Internet went down last night so I popped in my mother's DVD of the Popeye movie and it is worse than I remember. Granted the only thing about the film that I had remembered since I saw it as a child was not liking it, but this was one of the worst movies I have ever had the displeasure of watching. Williams gets the accent down decently but mumbles through 95% of his lines which, along with grinding his teeth makes it damn near impossible to understand almost everything he says. The music sucks (and this is coming from a Nilsson fan) and the acting is wooden at best, but the most off-putting part about this movie is the pathetic attempt to bring cartoon physics into a live action setting. Watching Williams, Duvall, Walston et. al. try to move around like cartoons (especially during fight scenes) is nauseating.

The only really interesting tid bit about this movie is that it is a Disney film despite Popeye not being a Disney cartoon.

[xraffle]

Yeah, after I watched the movie, I thought it was pretty bad. Even though I only paid $5 for the DVD, I can’t help but feel ripped off. Williams and Duvall were ok and I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the parts of Popeye and Olive any better. But I thought Smith’s portrayal of Bluto was awful. They portrayed him as some grumpy and mean old bully. While Bluto is like that in cartoons, at least in the cartoons, the character had a sense of humor. The character of Bluto in this movie is not like that. Hard to describe, but I’m sure Popeye fans know what I mean.

And I find it odd that in the movie, Popeye didn’t like Spinach and had to be force fed it. Maybe there’s a cartoon that I never saw or something, but as far as I remember, Popeye always voluntarily ate Spinach in the cartoons.