Popeye is a super-strong, spinach-scarfing sailor man who's searching for his father. During a storm that wrecks his ship, Popeye washes ashore and winds up rooming at the Oyl household, where he meets Olive. Before he can win her heart, he must first contend with Olive's fiancé, Bluto.
Robin Williams Shelley Duvall Ray Walston Paul Dooley Paul L. Smith Richard Libertini Donald Moffat MacIntyre Dixon Roberta Maxwell Donovan Scott Allan F. Nicholls Wesley Ivan Hurt Bill Irwin Robert Fortier David McCharen Sharon Kinney Peter Bray Linda Hunt Geoff Hoyle Wayne Robson Larry Pisoni Carlo Pellegrini Susan Kingsley Michael Christensen Ray Cooper Noel Parenti Karen McCormick John E. Bristol Julie Janney Show All…
John A. Larsen Michael H. Ford Robert Gravenor Hal Sanders Teresa Eckton Bill Phillips Sam F. Shaw Michael Minkler Sam Gemette
Popeye - Der Seemann mit dem harten Schlag, Popeye - Braccio di ferro, Ποπάυ, ο Ναύτης, Попай, פופאי, Pepek námořník, Skipper Skræk, Kippari-Kalle, Karl-Alfred, Попај, 뽀빠이, 大力水手, პაპაი, Temel Reis, ポパイ
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Netherlands6
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FranceU
Germany6
Netherlands6
Netherlands6
Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Japan
Netherlands
UK
USA
One of the weirdest things I've ever seen. It's barely a movie. It's like Robert Altman made 3 Women and kept looking at Shelley Duvall and saying to himself "God, DAMN that woman looks like Olive Oyl" and then he couldn't get it out of his head and it gave him bad dreams and he was begging his brain, "PLEASE, stop, I don't want to make a Popeye movie!" but his brain just kept showing Shelley Duvall going "Ohhhhhh!" in a high pitched voice and finally Robert Altmans therapist told him to just make the damn thing and he did it to make the nightmares go away... It's fuckin' weird, man.
The closest Hollywood has ever come to Playtime. Confounding on the first 10 viewings, but fully becomes a masterpiece around viewing #50, by which time every single citizen of Sweethaven will feel like your friend. Shelley Duvall should have gone home with Mr. Oscar. The "Everything is Food" number is as good as cinema gets. The production ran out of money and so the last stretch admittedly suffers, but even when this movie isn't working it's still fun to spend time in.
The new Blu-Ray is stunning, showcasing Giuseppe Rotunno's cinematography like I've never seen before. Every shot is so full of detail that it actually hurts to watch a little.
Directed by Altman, written by my boy Jules Fieffer, great nonsense songs by Harry Nilsson like "Everything is Food", lots of great physical comedy, gags, pratfalls, things of that nature, great character actors like Ray Walston, Bill Irwin, Paul Dooley, Linda Hunt, Dennis Franz and Donald Moffit, a real life cartoon village built on Malta, Shelly Duval looking more like a real cartoon character than any performance in history. An absolute joy. It's disgustapatin' how disrespected this movie was.
D.A.R.E. did an assembly at my elementary school in the 90s to warn us about this movie. "Sure, it's a barrel of laughs to watch Robin Williams eat spinach and riff with a baby. But this movie is a gateway drug to much harder Altmans" they warned. "Before you know it, you'll be hooked on his overlapping dialogue and defiant spirit. You'll be desperate to get your fix from McCabe & Ms. Miller or California Split. And it won't stop there." They dimmed the lights in our gymnasium. "Soon you'll be Beyond Therapy." You could hear a pin drop.
That night I went with my family to Blockbuster and rented Popeye. As with most War on Drugs era propaganda, I hadn't been discouraged at all. I had been introduced.
Popeye is so strong holy shit
“Popeye” is such a deranged piece of filmmaking that looking to its bizarre pedigree brings logic that the movie itself denies its audience entirely.
Of course this was a spite project from the guy who produced “Chinatown” and “The Godfather.” Of course it was.
Bob Evans - the prototypical Hollywood mogul who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s producer role in “Wag the Dog,” and (per Bob Odenkirk) the character of Saul on “Breaking Bad.” Bob Evans - the man who used questionably legal negotiating tactics through his whole career only to have it finally ended by a minor cocaine conviction.
Evan’s studio Paramount had lost a bidding war for rights to the musical “Annie,” so Evans decided on the next best cartoon…
I love how the many characters and their relationships only gradually come into focus, in much the same way as McCabe & Mrs Miller and Nashville. For example, Oxblood Oxheart and his Agnes Skinner-esque mother are seen quietly dining at Rough House’s restaurant and milling around Olive Oyl’s engagement party and a lot of other places long before they really figure into the plot in the boxing scene. There’s no scene announcing what, exactly, Wimpy’s deal is. He’s just always hanging around, looking for hamburgers. Probably no one knows how he became a regular at the Oyls’ dinner table.
A simple pass/fail test for if you have the capacity to bring any kind of imagination, flexibility, and depth of feeling to your…
What in fuck is this movie? Popeye is up there with the strangest studio movies ever made. A rambling, aimless nightmare that kind of beautifully captures the spirit and madcappery of a Fleischer animation while also relentlessly alienating the viewer. Characters repeat lines over and over. Most dialogue is muttered, meaningless, or talked over. Every action is deliberate, wobbly, and utterly bizarre. With his disgusting prosthetic arms, Robin Williams is a surprisingly excellent Popeye. Paul L. Smith is a walking horrorshow as Bluto. But Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl blows everyone out of the water. She not only looks exactly like the original character, but every movement she makes gives her the appearance of a flesh and blood cartoon. The music by Harry Nilsson, much like the rest of the film, is as jarring as it is oddly wonderful. As completely unwatchable as Popeye is, I think I love it?
Cocaine rained down like snow every day of the shoot.
What a strange artifact from a time before Hollywood discovered the formula to turn their intellectual property into perfectly safe box office successes. Also had no clue Robert Altman directed this. Feels less like a cartoon and more like an Altman movie than a Popeye movie probably should. The tone is weird, the characters are weird, it’s fun!
You know the director bullshit marketing thing they've been doing where they interview the Russo Brothers about making Super Butt 4: World Cop and they spit nonsense like "we love 70s paranoia thrillers, Super Butt 4: World Cop is our Three Days of the Condor" and then you go and see it and it just couldn't be further from the truth?
Robert Altman made a Popeye movie and it is FOR REAL a Robert Altman movie. He took his budget and coke to the island of Malta and made a genuinely inexplicable movie with great songs, great gags, and no plot. AND he didn't have to put a car commercial inside a toy commercial like they made Greta do.
One…
The original inflatable arms of Popeye apparently looked weird, so until new ones were made they filmed it so we couldn't see them; they also had to re-record Popeye's dialogue because he always had a pipe in his mouth, somehow forgetting that this would render his lines incomprehensible. Sometimes it feels like these things are a metaphor for the film itself, sometimes it feels like these things made it the glorious mess it is.
Never would I ever have imagined I'd be watching a movie-adaptation of Popeye that's also a musical, featuring Robin Williams in his first-ever film appearance (what a debut) and Shelley Duvall in her career decline (what a catalyst). And it certainly feels like a nightmarish fever-dream…
