For about 30 minutes, it looks like Popeye is going to be a total disaster. In many ways, it was. Coming off a critically-lauded decade that included films like The Long Goodbye, Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman choosing to direct a musical adaptation of E.C. Segar’s popular comic strip about a muscly, spinach-pounding sailor might have seemed totally random, and the resulting product is arguably a victim of its own inexplicability. The project originates from a competitive bidding war between Columbia and Paramount for the film rights to the Broadway musical Annie. When Paramount lost, power-producer Robert Evans reportedly asked executives which comic strip character the studio did have rights to, and the answer was…Popeye. Resultantly, Evans is as much a creative figurehead on the film as Altman. His name appears first in the opening credits and the project’s ensuing financial failure has often been dubbed “Evans’ Gate.” But what if I told you that dAltman’s Popeye, an odd ugly duckling of a film that sent its director into an ill-deserved exile for at least a decade, is actually good? Quite good, in fact.
But about those first 30 or so odd minutes. They’re awful, so bafflingly dire in fact that it’s vital to talk about them. Stick with it though, I promise. Depicting the arrival of Popeye (Robin Williams) at the surly, tax-ridden coastal village of Sweethaven, Altman’s characteristic penchant for overlapping dialogue clashes almost immediately with the film’s musical conceit. The songs, written by famed songwriter Harry Nilsson (often dubbed the “American Beatle”) debatably have their own scruffy charm, though “Everything Is Food,” which predominantly consists of the repetitive refrains “Everything is food, food, food,” and “Everything is meat, meat, meat,” is markedly abysmal. Altman’s insistence on live on-set singing makes the performances feel muted and lazy, and there’s a distinct lethargy and lack of imagination to the choreography and filmmaking. Finally, poor Williams’ dialogue is completely unintelligible. With the majority of his lines victim to an oversized prop pipe, the actor had to re-record most of his dialogue in post. Even the inspired presence of Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl (has there ever been more perfect casting?) appears unable to save this bizarre disaster of a motion picture.
Then, inexplicably, everything clicks into place. This is largely because Swee’Pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt), an adorable baby foisted onto Olive and Popeye one night by a mother unable to care for him. Olive is engaged to the brutish, mean Bluto (Paul L. Smith), but as soon as Swee’Pea appears, she and Popeye decide to raise the child together. From here, the film becomes an unusually sweet and warm-hearted caper, as the odd couple care for their child and contend with the devious machinations of a jealous, rebuffed Bluto and a mysterious villain named the Commodore. An overarching side plot, also concerning parenthood, involves Popeye’s mission to find his long-lost father (“me papa”). There’s the sense that in Swee’Pea, Popeye sees a chance to be the father he always wished he had.
Written by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, the film is nevertheless still largely plotless, but unfolds with the serialized, manic charm of a series of comic strips in the Sunday papers. Evans was reportedly insistent on the film resembling these original comics versus what he saw as a “distorted” cartoon version of the characters. The resulting product has an odd amount of humanity and underlying pathos within it, exploring themes of parenthood, reconciliation and finding your inner strength. Altman’s direction also seems to warm to the material as it goes on, his knack for ensemble work paying off in several hilarious slapstick sequences. The auteur’s overlapping dialogue also properly mimics the effect that numerous speech bubbles would have in a comic panel, lending itself to some fun repeated vocal gags and line deliveries. Goofiness aside, Popeye’s emotional centerpiece is undoubtedly the musical number “He Needs Me,” which, as performed by Duvall, feels akin to a warm hug or wrapping yourself up in a cozy blanket on a cold winter’s night. It’s such a sweet song, in fact, that Paul Thomas Anderson repurposed it in his own unconventional love story, Punch-Drunk Love (as a sidenote, Popeye is purportedly amongst PTA’s favorite films, hardly surprising given his general affinity for Altman’s work).
As Disney has proven repeatedly, it’s exceedingly difficult to properly translate cartoon logic into the “real world,” which makes Altman’s achievements in this regard even more impressive. Aspects of the movie’s messily assembled climax, partially involving yet another malfunctioning prop in the form of a massive octopus, feel largely unfinished, but the overall commitment to unabashed absurdity is more charming than chintzy. Another reason that the film feels incomplete is because it literally is. While filming the climactic sequence, the budget eventually ballooned past $20 million, and the nonconformist Altman was ordered back to California with the already-shot footage. He left behind a production that had gone three weeks over schedule, as well as a marvelously intricate set that, to this day, still exists in Malta as a popular tourist attraction.
While definitively flawed (especially, as said, in that horrid first act), Popeye deserves far better than its lot. While a financial and critical disaster in its time, the film is far from being the dubious cinematic curio its widely ridiculed reputation would suggest. It may seem obnoxiously cliché, especially at this point, to reassess such a derided film as “good, actually,” but there’s certain cases in which the critics really did get it wrong, or rather didn’t see the full picture. It’s a strangely affecting film, one that sneaks up on you just when you think it’s totally lost the thread. There’s also something undeniably bittersweet about the on-screen pairing of Williams and Duvall, two distinctively charismatic performers who held behind their bubbly and whimsical on-screen personas a marked sadness. That world-weariness can be felt throughout Popeye, or rather a poignant undercurrent of longing and a desire to be understood. Perhaps Altman, eternally an idiosyncratic outsider within the studio system, felt that as well. Just like audiences in 1980, the townsfolk of Sweethaven initially judge Popeye and reject him off-hand. But if you really get to know him, you’ll find that there’s something far sweeter, layered and affecting underneath. As the crusty sailor says himself, “I yam what I yam.” Eat your spinach and give it a try.
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