 Popeye (1980) The only thing kids love more than Robert Altman is Harry Nilsson, the later in his career, the better. Why, just today, my son asked me if I had any late-70s or early-80s Harry Nilsson albums, "when he was constantly drunk, high, and incapable of writing a decent song." Ah, enough. I don't have a son, at least not one that made it past the age of abortion. But come now … when making a live-action kids' musical feature film based on "Popeye," how does Robert Altman enter anyone's head as a good choice to direct it? Was Ingmar Bergman unavailable? Popeye may well be the messiest movie ever made. Even as a kid I knew something was off about it, because I kept waiting for anything Popeye-related to happen, but it never really did. Altman chooses to focus his movie more on the seaside village of Sweethaven, depicting its many colorful characters in lugubrious detail, and usually allowing them all to speak simultaneously, while an overdubbed Robin Williams mumbles incoherently on top of it all. Sweeping wide-angle shots capture the relentlessly busy activity of Sweethaven, with everyone bustling around pretty much throughout the entire film. It's hard, even as an adult, to figure out what you're supposed to be focussing on. And it's even harder to figure out what any of it has to do with "Popeye." Popeye. The Sailor Man. Eats spinach, fights Bluto. Courts Olive Oyl. Cares for Swee' Pea. Pals around with Wimpy. Laughs to himself. Occasionally has adventures with his Pappy. "Popeye" is lighthearted fun, full of slapstick sight gags, ridiculous fighting, and rapid-fire jokes. Popeye, on the other hand, is a deathly slog through a very off-putting town populated by entirely unikeable characters. It's a musical … sometimes. Harry Nilsson's songs, despite a current hipster desire to hear them as lost gems, thanks to Paul Thomas Anderson's use of the blathery "He Needs Me" in the blathery Punch-Drunk Love, are crap. In most cases, it sounds like he literally refused to write anything more than a title, if that. "I'm Mean," "He's Large," "Everything is Food" … there's a slight charm to some of them, but most come off like extremely cynical knockoffs pandering what Nilsson must have seen as an inevitably brainless audience of children. At any rate, you can't really even hear the songs, as the entire cast continues to talk, mumble, and grumble throughout all of them, and none of the actors attempts to sing on-pitch. What the hell was going on here? Well, cocaine must be to blame for a lot of it. Producer Robert Evans (the Kid Stays in the Picture guy) was even busted for trafficking while Popeye was being made, and certainly the 1979 incarnations of Robin Williams and Robert Altman were no strangers to the nose candy. And while many films were made under the influence of coke, few show it as clearly as Popeye. Watching the movie is like being in a room with thirty people all snorting lines and yelling half-baked epiphanies at each other, flitting from subject to subject and mood to mood on a moment's notice. Therefore, Popeye is, on a moment's notice, a broad Marx Brothers-esque comedy, a romance, a song-and-dance show, a leaden ensemble drama, a period piece, an intellectual homage to the old cartoons, an interior monologue, and a swashbuckling adventure. What it is through all of these is a fucking mess. Yet Popeye holds definite appeal on many levels. The cast is terrific, even though the characters suck. Robin Williams is a spot-on Popeye, Shelley Duvall is a strangely braindead Olive, Ray Walston steals the show as Poopdeck Pappy, and Paul Dooley is exactly right as Wimpy. (Look close—real close—for tiny cameos by Van Dyke Parks, Klaus Voorman, and Dennis Franz.) The backstory is also terrific. Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin were very nearly the leads! That's fun to imagine. And the sudden emergence of a heart-touching melody, or a genuinely funny aside, gives Popeye a disorienting feel that is hard to turn away from … you become intrigued that perhaps the filmmakers and cast actually know what they're up to, so you hold out for a clarity that never comes. Most of the film is spent following the peripheral characters who in any other Disney movie would be simple filler. Though Williams is on screen much of the time, his Popeye keeps slipping through your fingers. It's maddening, yet beguiling to watch. You can't dismiss Popeye as a purely bad movie, nor can you effectively champion it as an underrated kids' classic. I can't think of any kid who would enjoy it. As my son said when I suggested traveling to Malta, where the Sweethaven set still stands as a tourist attraction: "Fuck you, dad!" Oh wait, I already told you I don't have a son. Well, my lying can be no more misguided than the concept, creation, and execution of Popeye, which simply goes the wrong way with virtually every step. Assessing the film with a rating is still, after all these years, completely impossible. I therefore award it Three Cocaine Cowboys, for special achievement in artistic wrongheadedness while fucked up.
Review by La Fée |
