Popeye

Starring: Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Ray Walston, Paul Dooley, Paul L. Smith, Richard Libertini, Donald Moffat, MacIntyre Dixon, Roberta Maxwell, Donovan Scott, Bill Irwin, Dennis Franz
Directed by Robert Altman
Rating: PG
Genre: Comedy, Adventure
1980

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A sailor (Robin Williams) arrives in a small town, looking for his father and connects with a fretful woman (Shelley Duvall).

Review:

Tim: At first, I felt excitedly incredulous that they actually made a live action Popeye movie. I wouldn't say I ever loved the spinach-eating sailor man, but I remember watching the cartoons as a kid. I was interested in seeing what the film adaptation would be like. Unfortunately, Robert Altman directs one of the worst movies I've seen in many years. It's borderline unwatchable. This is a trash movie, filled with flaws and I disliked it immensely.

First off, it's egregious that this movie clocks in at 1 hour and 54 minutes. Why? Why on earth would Altman subject us to such a long movie based on a bad children's cartoon? This movie is easily 25 minutes too long. There's not nearly enough substance to support a film that runs this long. There's a few musical numbers, all of which extend the film and add almost nothing to the mix. Altman doesn't use any of his time wisely, so the whole movie feels like it plods forward, meandering here and there with never a sense of urgency. It was incredibly difficult to sit through.

The cast is actually solid. Robin Williams makes a great Popeye, in his first true starring role. He embraces the quirks of the character and plays the part well. One of the biggest issues with the film is that the audio is atrocious. I read that much of Williams' dialogue was found to be inaudible, so they had to re-dub much of the dialogue. This shows. His voice work feels disconnected from his character. It's absolutely poor filmmaking and I blame Altman and his team for this. Williams is held back by having to redub his lines, which makes him seem less effective than he was. Generally, I enjoyed him in this role. Shelley Duvall was perfectly cast as Olive Oyl. She hits every right note in bringing this animated character to life on screen. I was stunned by how well she played the role. The only problem is that Olive is an incredibly annoying character and Duvall, by doing her job, grated on my nerves. Still, as frustrating as her character was, I marveled at her performance. Paul L. Smith made a good Bluto. He played the part well and seemed ideally cast. Paul Dooley was an effective Wimpy. Ray Walston was perfectly cast as Pappy. It's bizarre to me to see such a perfectly selected cast, who all seem less effective than they should because of poor direction and an atrocious script.

The script was just awful. There might have been some decent ideas, but it's overly long and not nearly exciting enough. It felt like such a challenge to tell a story using the characters from the animated series- they got all the characters in, but forgot to tell a worthwhile story. It feels like the film postures on this- look how we adapted all these animated characters to live action! Aren't we amazing? Oh, what are these characters doing? Nothing compelling, but who cares? Look at them! The story was beyond weak.

I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Robert Altman in general. MASH was really good and I liked Gosford Park, but his others movies leave so much to be desired. He was an incredibly experienced director before delivering this mess, so inexperience wasn't a factor. I'm not entirely sure how badly this movie got away from him. You could argue a Popeye movie should never have been made in the first place. I admit, it's extremely difficult to adapt it. This was a challenge, but Altman wasn't up for it. He gets lost early in the film and never finds his way out.

Popeye is a major catastrophe of a film. It's so incredibly stupid. It's never funny, rarely entertaining, and next to impossible to care about these cartoonish characters. It's a major misstep. And I pretty much hated the movie from start to finish.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 3.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: MASH, Gosford Park