Just watched the movie Popeye. Such an odd duck of a movie. Robert Altman directed and I must say he was the WRONG choice of director. TUrning a children's book, comic or cartoon into a movie is a near impossible task. One that requires translating both moments and feelings into the movie where you can walk away feeling like a kid again. Most of the time it's a jumbled mess. Like Grinch and Cat in the Hat...that type of mess. Only ONCE has it been brilliant and that was Where the WIld Things Are. And that took a director with the ability to take both moments and feelings and go abstract yet solid. This movie....I could see every scene in this movie done as an actual Popeye cartoon. The constant chaos and slapstick mixed with the surreal is what Popeye was all about. Popeye always wandered around talking to himself and being putdown or having mishaps happen to him while Olive Oyl always whined and nagged openly about same. Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall totally deliver on those counts. Robin is always mumbling something under his breath and you can tell the points where Altman let him improvise. The scene where they meet and are tripping over each other epitomize both characters. And the townspeople all do similar farcical bits of slapstick and abstract scene work. Amonst the oddly shaped and sized people are veteran slapstick maestro Bill Irwin, Paul Dooley as Wimpy, Richard Libertini (the editor from Fletch), Ray Walston (Fast TImes Mr Hand), Donald Moffat (Garry from the Thing minus the f***ing couch), Linda Hunt, even Dennis Franz as a bully. And musicians like Klaus Voorman (who played on many of the beatles solo records) appear alongside Songwriter Harry Nillson. Yeah the Nillson songs don't work at all. It's a mystery why they are here. To fill time I guess. Also maybe because Popeye the cartoon always had music in it and sometimes a song. But their addition here is very unmemorable and often bad. Still this movie abstracts from scene to scene complete with silly cartoon sound effects. Perhaps a theatre director could have made this movie work if it was really tight and freeflowing. The special effects are just timed so poorly...these days they would all be CGI. I don't even know if that would help. Back in the day I'd say let Lucas direct this. Or maybe someone like Richard Donner (Goonies). Or even Sam Raimi or another horror director as this cartoon was often scary as crap!
It just needed pep and flow and Altman was not known for that. Sure Altman's films flow soundwise and are cartoons of themselves...And soundwise he was an appropriate director . But otherwise a failure. Even as a kid when I first watched it, I didn't like it. I think perhaps the only way to REALLY do this as a modern film is just to do an Computer ANimated feature.
3/10