Popeye

Popeye is a live action movie based on a comic strip and cartoon of the same name. Most of the episodes are about a sailor named Popeye rescuing his love interest named Olive Oyl from the villain named Bluto. I rented a DVD of the cartoons and the show is pretty good. But will this movie be as good as the Comic and Cartoon? Let's find out.







The movie starts in the town of Sweethaven where the towns people sing an anthem of some sort entitled "Sweethaven". Now, the song has a very catchy tune, but the problem is there are certain points in the song where you can't tell what the people are saying but the tune is still catchy. Sorry I got distracted. At the same time a stranger comes to town. That stranger is Popeye (Robin Williams). When Popeye docks, the tax collector (Donald Moffat) taxes him with a bunch of things like docking tax and docking under the dock tax. Popeye looks for a place with a room for rent/hotel that he can stay in. He finds a house with a room for rent. The house belongs to the Oyl family. It turns out the one of the Oyl's named Olive (Shelley Duvall) is engaged to the most powerful (not to mention scariest) man in town Bluto (Paul L. Smith). The next day Popeye is hanging out in a restaurant and everyone in the restaurant sings the song "Everything Is Food". Now the song itself is pretty good. But food has absolutely nothing with the main plot. Anyway moving on. At the restaurant Popeye tells a guy named Wimpy (Paul Dooley) that he came to Sweethaven to find his long lost father. Some ruffians make fun of Popeye and Popeye defeats them.

 That night it's Olive and Bluto's engagement party. But Olive realizes she can't find anything good to say about Bluto so she leaves. She runs into Popeye and they both run into an abandoned baby named Swee'pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt). They decide to take care of Swee'pea. Bluto realizes that Olive left and he throws a fit and sings the song "I'm Mean" in which Bluto destroys the house. Bluto officially declares Popeye his enemy. Popeye decides to compete in a boxing match against the town's boxing champion (Peter Bray). If he wins, he gets a big cash prize so he can pay for the damage that Bluto did. Popeye defeats the champion and wins the prize. Then Olive tells Popeye that she knew that he was  going to win because she asked Swee'pea if Popeye was going to win and Swee'Pea nodded his head which means Swee'pea is psychic. Wait stop stop... Swee,pea is a psychic? That's kind of out of nowhere.



             ***SPOILER ALERT STOP HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT THE END RUINED***

 Wimpy decides to take Swee'pea to the horse race so he can earn extra money. Popeye finds Wimpy and tells him if he uses Swee'pea's Psychic powers like that he will leave and Popeye does leave the Oyl house and takes Swee'pea with him. As Popeye leaves with Swee'pea and gets charged by the tax collector for some sort of tax and Popeye tosses the tax collector into the water. The whole town cheers but in all the confusion Swee'pea gets kidnaped by Bluto. Bluto also kidnaps Olive. Meanwhile on Bluto's boat, it turns out that Bluto's boss is...Popeye's father Poop-deck Pappy (Ray Walston) *insert "Star Wars" joke here*. But Bluto betrays Pappy. So it's up to Popeye, Pappy, and the Oyls to save Swee'pea and Olive. Popeye and company set sail to find Bluto. Bluto sails to an island and uses Swee'pea's Psychic abilities to dive for a burried treasure (that's also out of nowhere). Popeye defeats Bluto (by eating spinach) and he saves Swee'pea and Olive and they end it with the Popeye theme song "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man". The End.



                                                  ***SPOILERS OVER KEEP READING***



This movie is pretty good...not a masterpiece but still pretty good. Let's start with the problems. For starters the plot is all over the place: I mean long lost fathers, psychic babies, and buried treasure? Yeah  all over the place. Also some may find Olive Oyl to be more annoying then she was in the cartoon and/or comic strip. There are a lot of cartoon sound effects that can be annoying. But there are a lot of cartoony gags so I guess you can let that pass. But there are some good things too. I like the set and costume design a lot. A lot of the jokes are funny. The songs are also pretty good with only a few intolerable songs. Also most importantly it is like the cartoon/comic (unlike other adaptations of cartoons). It's a good movie but it's not for everyone.

CAROON FISHERMAN: "I FINALLY GOT IT!! IT MUST BE A BIG ONE!!"