Psycho's Movie Reviews #267: Popeye (1980)

Popeye is a 1980 American musical comedy film directed by Robert Altman and produced by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions. It is based on E. C. Segar's comics character of the same name. The script was written by Jules Feiffer, and it featured Robin Williams[3] as Popeye the Sailor Man and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl. Its story follows Popeye's adventures as he arrives in the town of Sweethaven.

The film premiered on December 6, 1980 in Los Angeles, California and opened in the rest of the United States the following week. It grossed $6.3 million in its opening weekend, and $49.8 million worldwide, against a budget of $20 million. It received negative reviews from critics when it was first released, but has received improved reviews over time.

Plot

Popeye, a strong sailor, arrives at the small coastal town of Sweethaven while searching for his missing father. He rents a room at the Oyl family's boarding house where the Oyls plan to have their daughter Olive become engaged to Captain Bluto, a powerful, perpetually angry bully who manages the town in the name of the mysterious Commodore. However, on the night of the engagement party, Olive sneaks out after discovering that the only attribute she can report for her bullying fiancé is size. She encounters Popeye, who failed to fit in with the townsfolk at the party. The two eventually come across an abandoned baby in a basket. Popeye and Olive adopt the child, naming him Swee'Pea after the town Sweethaven, and the two return to the Oyls' home. Bluto, whom Olive had stood up, finds out about this encounter and, out of rage, imposes heavy taxes on the Oyls' property and possessions. A greedy taxman follows up on Bluto's demand, but Popeye helps the Oyls' financial situation by winning a hefty prize by defeating a boxer named Oxblood Oxheart.

The next day, Popeye discovers that Swee'Pea can predict the future by whistling when he hears the correct answer to a question. J. Wellington Wimpy, the constantly hungry local mooch and a petty gambler, also notices this and asks Popeye and Olive to take Swee'Pea for a walk. He actually takes him to the "horse races" (a mechanical carnival horse game) and wins two games. Hearing of this, Olive and her family decide to get in on the action and use Swee'Pea to win, but an outraged Popeye finds out and takes Swee'Pea away.

Later, after Popeye throws the taxman into the sea (thereby earning the town's respect), Wimpy kidnaps the child at Bluto's orders. Wimpy informs Popeye about the kidnapping after being threatened by Olive. Popeye goes to the Commodore's ship, where he learns that the Commodore, who has been recently tied up by Bluto, is indeed Popeye's father, Poopdeck Pappy, who accepts that Popeye is his son after exposing Popeye's hatred of spinach. Meanwhile, Bluto kidnaps Olive and sets sail with her and Swee'Pea to find buried treasure promised by Pappy. Popeye, Pappy, Wimpy and the Oyl family board Pappy's ship to chase Bluto to a desolate island in the middle of the ocean, called Scab Island.

Popeye catches up to Bluto and fights him but, despite his determination, Popeye is overpowered. During the fight, Pappy recovers his treasure and opens the chest to reveal a collection of personal sentimental items from Popeye's infancy, including a few cans of spinach. A gigantic octopus awakens and attacks Olive from underwater (after Pappy saves Swee'Pea from a similar fate). With Popeye in a choke hold, Pappy throws him a can of spinach; recognizing Popeye's dislike for spinach, Bluto force-feeds him the can before throwing him into the water. The spinach revitalizes Popeye and boosts his strength, helping him to defeat both Bluto and the giant octopus. Popeye celebrates his victory and his new-found appreciation of spinach while Bluto swims off, having literally turned yellow.

Production

n his book Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops, James Robert Parish said the Popeye musical had its basis in the bidding war for the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Annie between the two major studios vying for the rights, Columbia and Paramount. When Robert Evans learned that Paramount had lost the bidding for Annie, he held an executive meeting with Charles Bluhdorn, head of Paramount’s parent company Gulf+Western, and executives Barry Diller, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg in which he asked about comic strip characters which the studio held the rights to which could also be used in order to create a movie musical, and one attendee said "Popeye".[9]

At that time, even though King Features Syndicate (now a unit of Hearst Communications) retained the television rights to Popeye and related characters, with Hanna-Barbera then producing the series The All-New Popeye Hour under license from King Features, Paramount had long held the theatrical rights to the Popeye character, due to the studio's having released Popeye cartoon shorts produced by Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios from 1932 to 1957.

Evans commissioned Jules Feiffer to write a script. In 1977, he said he wanted Dustin Hoffman to play Popeye opposite Lily Tomlin as Olive Oyl, with John Schlesinger directing. Hoffman later dropped out due to creative differences with Feiffer. Gilda Radner, then popular as an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, was also considered for the Olive Oyl role. Radner's manager Bernie Brillstein discouraged her from taking the part due to his concerns about the quality of the script and worries about her working for months on an isolated set with Evans and Altman (both known for erratic behaviour and unorthodox creative methods).

In December 1979, Disney joined the film as part of a two-picture production deal (including Dragonslayer) with Paramount. Disney acquired the foreign rights through its Buena Vista unit; the deal was motivated by the drawing power that the studio's films had in Europe.

Principal photography commenced on January 23, 1980. The film was shot in Malta. The elaborate Sweethaven set was constructed beyond what was needed for filming, adding to the cost and complexity of the production, along with a recording studio, editing facilities, and other buildings, including living quarters. Filming wrapped on June 19, 1980, three weeks over schedule due to bad weather. The set still exists, and it is a popular tourist attraction known as Popeye Village. Parish wrote that Robin Williams referred to this set as "Stalag Altman".

Parish notes other production problems. Evans insisted the screenplay reflect the comic-strip Popeye and not the "distorted" cartoon version. Feiffer's script went through several rewrites, and he expressed concern that too much screen time was being devoted to minor characters. Feiffer also disliked Nilsson's songs, feeling they weren't right for the film. Popeye's original muscle arms formed of silicon rubber were difficult for Williams to manipulate and remove after filming, so two Italian artisans were brought to Malta to remake them and Altman had to juggle his shooting schedule. He also had the cast sing some of their musical numbers during filming, breaking with the traditional movie-musical practice of actors recording the songs in a studio first and then lip-synching -- thus reducing the sound quality due to difficulties in accurately capturing the voices. Williams also had to re-record his dialogue after running into trouble with his character's mumbling style, a by-product of talking with a pipe in his mouth, and his penchant for ad-libs led to clashes with the director. The final battle involving the octopus ran into trouble when the mechanical beast failed to work properly. After the production cost rose beyond $20 million, Paramount ordered Altman to wrap filming and return to California with what he had.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Popeye premiered at the Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on December 6, 1980, two days before what would have been E.C. Segar's 86th birthday.

The reception with the public and critics was "so toxic" that "Altman was left unemployable and exiled to Paris, directing micro-budgeted indie theatre adaptations for the remainder of the decade."

Reviews at the time were negative but the film has been more positively reappraised over time. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 63% based on reviews from 35 critics, with the critical consensus stating that "Altman's take on the iconic cartoon is messy and wildly uneven, but its robust humour and manic charm are hard to resist." On Metacritic it has a score of 64 out of 100, based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing that Duvall was "born to play" Olive Oyl, and with Popeye Altman had proved "it is possible to take the broad strokes of a comic strip and turn them into sophisticated entertainment." Gene Siskel also awarded 3.5 out of 4, writing that the first 30 minutes were "tedious and totally without a point of view", but once Swee'pea was introduced the film "then becomes quite entertaining and, in a few scenes, very special." Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "In its own idiosyncratic fashion, it works."

Other critics were unfavourable, such as Leonard Maltin, who described the picture as a bomb: "E.C. Segar's beloved sailor man boards a sinking ship in this astonishingly boring movie. A game cast does its best with an unfunny script, cluttered staging, and some alleged songs. Tune in a couple hours' worth of Max Fleischer cartoons instead; you'll be much better off." Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "a thoroughly charming, immensely appealing mess of a movie, often high-spirited and witty, occasionally pretentious and flat, sometimes robustly funny and frequently unintelligible. It is, in short, a very mixed bag." Variety wrote that all involved "fail to bring the characters to life at the sacrifice of a large initial chunk of the film. It's only when they allow the characters to fall back on their cartoon craziness that the picture works at all." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "While there are things to like in this elaborately stylized, exasperating musical slapstick fantasy ... they emerge haphazardly and flit in and out of a precarious setting." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times described the film as "rarely uninteresting but seldom entirely satisfying", and thought that the adult tone of the dialogue left it "uncertain what the film's target audience is intended to be." TV Guide says- "this film from director Robert Altman and scenarist Jules Feiffer adapts "Popeye" to feature length--a good idea gone down the drain under Altman's spotty direction. Only in the last 50 minutes does POPEYE create some excitement."

The film grossed $6 million on its opening weekend in the United States, and made $32,000,000 after 32 days. The film earned US$49,823,037 at the United States box office — more than double the film's budget — and a worldwide total of $60 million.

Film Comment wrote "Before the film's release, industry wags were mocking producer Robert Evans by calling it 'Evansgate'" but "Apparently the film has caught on solidly with young children."

Although the film's gross was decent, it was not the blockbuster that Paramount and Disney had expected, and was thus written off as a disappointment.

It had "an astonishingly lucrative home video run that continues to this day 2015".

Budget $20 million

Box office $60 million

My Review

I know I shouldn't recommend Popeye, but somehow I yam (ugh, did I just make that pun, forgive me). Maybe it would be a different perspective had I seen it when I was little- frankly I'm not sure why I missed it, as I liked the cartoons and liked Robin Williams- but now as an adult Popeye is one crazy kind of movie. It's a work that is all its own, even as it looks way too derivative of bad kids musicals and second rate slapstick. But there's 'something' to Popeye, I can't quite put my finger on it, and it's due more than likely to Robert Altman.

Some have said the film's a masterpiece (I wouldn't go that far), while some say it's a travesty (I wouldn't go there either). One thing is for certain: under a different director, either more mainstream or of a more high-velocity action-movie kind of filmmaker, Popeye wouldn't look and feel this way. Yet Popeye turns out to be satisfying because Altman does what any of the exceptional directors- Sam Raimi, Tim Burton, Guillermo Del-Toro, Richard Donner- who've adapted comic books do, as he captures the spirit of the source in a specific style suitable for the director. It's far from being any great work of art, but I'd dare anyone else to make a Popeye film as joyful and buoyantly crazy as this.

And maybe such an idiosyncratic director like Altman- who as Gary Trudeau once said is a great director of 'scenes'- could translate such simple little diddies like Popeye stories. There are no big arcs to follow or a whole host of villains that Popeye must thwart; the only story is that Popeye (Robin Williams) comes to Sweet Haven looking for his Pappy, only to find that he's something of an outsider among the town's multiple eccentrics, meets and sort of falls for Olive Oyl (Shelly Duvall), and gets into hot water with Bluto (Paul L. Smith) while trying to protect a baby named Swee'pea. The rest of the picture is like a big ball of impressions taken from the original strip, and a little from the cartoon (sorry, folks, not much spinach until the climax). But what Altman also goes for is the manic side of Sweet Haven, how many rules there are with the guy who fines you for every little thing (unless you're Olive Oyl for some reason), and bullies seem to be right at the Burger joint on the mark. Luckily there's not too much overlapping dialog like in his other films, otherwise it might get cluttered- that is, if it isn't already.

Did I mention it's a musical? And not a great musical by any stretch. I'd imagine it wasn't Altman's intention- maybe more Robert Evans, or whomever, maybe Disney- to make this film a musical, least of all like this, where the ratio is split down the side: half the songs are actually pretty catchy, or at least performed well ("He Needs Me", which Olive Oyl sings and was used in Punch-Drunk Love recently, is probably my favourite after the original theme song), and the others are just bad, dead weight (the song that Popeye sings as he writes a letter to Swee'Pea and brightly hued images of Swee'Pea pop up, is atrocious, as is Pappy's number when he's tied up). Yet somehow the songs don't detract a whole lot from the rambunctious attitude to comedy. Sometimes it might be something unintentional, like a line from Williams as he mutters a throwaway jab or observation that's a riot. Or the physical pratfalls, mostly expected like Olive's clumsiness or Bruto's BIG anger in the house enraged at waiting for Olive, that do connect.

It's this cheerfully mad attitude that keeps Popeye from becoming a total warp of a kids movie, where watching Popeye go to work on a Oxblood Oxheart in a boxing match is beautifully choreographed to the wacky comic-book mentality. The only danger in all of this then is to consider whether much of this is funny because it genuinely is, for a family movie anyway, or if it's just so corny that you can't help but laugh.

It's not a Howard the Duck scenario, of course, but there are times when it is, frankly, stupid stuff Altman's dealing with here, and ironically photographed in mostly great compositions from Giuseppe Rotuno (yes, of 8 1/2 fame) and with wonderful production/costume designs. Where else will I see an animatronic pelican and (a totally spot-on) Shelly Duvall getting dragged underwater by a rubber octopus, least in an Altman film? Or Robin Williams with fore-arms larger than his head? Could it be a guilty pleasure? If it is, then damned if it isn't one of the sunniest and most delirious of the 80s. Well, blow me down! 7/10

{Even if most of the songs in this aren't the best, but not the worst; 'He Needs Me' by Shelley Duvall is honestly the best thing about this film. I've only seen Shelley Duvall in this and The Shining, yet it's enough to convince me that she's a good actress. Who knew she could sing? This song has a strange hypnotic quality to it that is enough to make you tear up... One thing I like about the song is you can fit it in both an optimistic (Popeye) or a negative (Punch Drunk Love) setting. I keep wondering if people as a joke would put this song over The Shining}.