Popeye (1980)

Popeye the sailor (Robin Williams) comes to the waterfront town of Sweethaven looking for his father. The eccentric townspeople aren't very friendly but when he and Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall), the daughter of the boarding house owner (Roberta Maxwell) where he resides, find an abandoned baby (Wesley Ivan Hurt), a romance develops. Perceived as a flop when initially released, mostly due to lukewarm reviews, the film actually made money. Perhaps the expectations were too high, who knows but the film is a delightful concoction. The director Robert Altman gives us a highly stylized musical in the vein of the very early sound musicals of Clair and Lubitsch. The charming songs by Harry Nilsson aren't the usual calculated Broadway show goods but little moments of wistful musical reverie. Williams (who died this week) makes for an athletically graceful Popeye. Physically he's perfect and he gets Popeye's little quirks down pat but the film's ace is Duvall's Olive Oyl. Ripped from the funny pages, she's quite astonishing and her rendition of He Needs Me is sublime. The Jules Feiffer (CARNAL KNOWLEDGE) screenplay manages to replicate the idiosyncratic world of comics with little dashes that are so right (when Popeye compliments a woman on her black fox fur, the head rises and growls at him). Alas, the last half hour or so is pretty much a mess and conventional and well, blah. Wolf Kroeger's production design is marvelous as are Scott Bushnell's costume design. With Ray Walston, Linda Hunt, Paul Dooley, Paul L. Smith, Bill Irwin, Donovan Scott and Donald Moffat.