Director Robert Altman
Stars Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall & Ray Walston
Rated PG
Score 4/6

The adventures of the famous sailor man and his friends in the seaside town of Sweethaven.

E. C. Segar, was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Popeye.The character first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. The Robert Altman directed 1980 movie Popeye was Robin Williams’s first starring role in a movie.
Popeye was received at the time, it should be noted it received the worst picture award from the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards in 1981 and in 2006. As poorly received as it was, Popeye still is worth a watch not only to prove that there is more to the comic book genre then what Marvel has put forward in the past twenty years but also because of the musical numbers, the visual style of the village of Sweethaven was also kind of interesting. I really enjoyed William’s rendition of I’m Popeye The Sailor Man. It was kind of nice to see that the movie didn’t ignore its origins with an animated introduction using the voice talent Jack Mercer (one of the original actors to voice the animated version of Popeye). Popeye certainly was an odd character to see done in live action and just maybe it was a bad idea to do especially since supposedly a lot of Robin Williams lines had to be redubbed in the edit. It was also great to see that this served as a sort of live action origin story for the live action Popeye. I enjoyed.Shelley Duvall’s performance as Olive Oyl and she had some great tender moments with Williams as Popeye. Williams’ ability to capture Popeye’s vocal mannerisms has certainly made one of the more ‘risky’ character choices that have been brought to the cinema screen. But what I really liked about the movie was because it embraced what can only be described as Cartoon logic which is highlighted between the fight sequences between Popeye and Bluto (portrayed by Paul L. Smith). Smith had a great menacing presence as Bluto and you can’t help but hate the character of The Taxman portrayed by Donald Moffat.