Popeye (1980)

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Popeye (1980):Dir: Robert Altman / Cast: Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Paul Smith, Paul Dooley, Ray Walston: Live action cartoon based upon the spinach-eating sailor. Robin Williams conveys Popeye from facial expressions to posture to big forearms. He is in search for his father but his new found companionship with Olive Oyl leads to the adoption of Sweet Pea. Simple plot gives way to many songs playing back to back with an exciting climax where Popeye must battle Bluto and an octopus. Director Robert Altman deserves credit for the tremendous translation. He previously made such films as Nashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and M.A.S.H. Williams is the complete vision of the sailor who is in search of family and companionship. Shelley Duvall sports the high pitch voice and long limbs of Olive Oyl. She will be rescued by film's end but she embodies the physical and vocal features. Paul Smith steals the entire film as the tyrant Bluto from the moment he sings, "I'm Mean." He will be turned yellow once Popeye learns of his secret ability with spinach. Paul Dooley plays hamburger craving Wimpy who attempts to use Sweet Pea's whistling to better his gambling. Ray Walston plays Popeye's father who simply goes by the name Pappy. Casting is key and rises this film above gutter level. Well made and delivers on the comic book appeal to great effect. It is visually successful despite its simplicity. Score: 9 / 10

This movie has its charms, but some flaws too. The casting is excellent with some great performances specially Robin Williams, but the script needed some fixes, mostly in the last third.Some of the songs are good, others OK, but none is bad. The side characters (the ones that are not in the cartoon) like the Olive family didn't add much to the movie. At the end there was too much characters and I didn't see why they were still there... In my opinion it would be better if they had less screen time.Good movie, not a masterpiece as some says, neither awful as others says. It's worth a watch,

I'm not sure if you ever could have made a good picture out of the Popeye cartoon or comic. The characters and general schtick of the thing work well for half an hour at most. Still, what these filmmakers gave us in the end is worse than could ever be imagined: this is a nightmarish piece of cinema, one of the worst major Hollywood productions I have ever seen.It's almost miraculous how wrong everything went, because the casting is perfect. The sets and costumes are perfect. Such a shame the screenplay is terrible, meandering from plot point to plot point, vaguely connected and with the most ear bleeding-ly horrible "musical numbers" in between. Every piece of dialogue is mere noise, a cacophony of mumbling and screeching and pratfalls. I almost wished I were dead watching it.How anyone could ever procure joy from this will be the eternal mystery for me. To call it unpleasant would be an understatement.

Perhaps this movie was ahead of its time. A precursor to today's more interpretive and humanizing comic book movie. The characters cannot be interpreted using the paradigm of the source material. Instead see that if the audience is to participate in the hero's journey and suspend disbelief in order to come away with something, the characters must be more than caricature. Idioms and quirks intact of course, but also a heart and soul that is authentic. Otherwise it descends into mere parody.Williams' performance is if anything authentic and soulful. Incredibly faithful to the character of Popeye and yet three-dimensional. Setting the tone for Williams' commitment to character that was to become a benchmark in comedic acting. The film is Altmanesque in its bold exposure of the beauty in human frailty. In being ridiculous in order to achieve an honest reflection of the human condition.