150 Word Review: 'Popeye' (1980)
Come sail away
Robert Altman's imaginative 1980 slapstick musical comedy Popeye was a Titanic-sized disaster, a Hollywood blockbuster that combined a beloved cartoon character with one of 70s cinema’s most slyly cynical directors.
Throw in hotshot Robin Williams—his first starring role—and you have a movie that didn't float. But watch it now: Popeye cruises; it's charming and silly. Altman respects cartoonist E.C. Segar's world of sailors, brutes, and broke cheeseburger aficionados. Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson's quirky songs have only sweetened with time; they're catchy and sad and sung by actors who can't sing.
But this movie would capsize if it weren't for the balanced talents of Shelley Duvall as lanky, willful damsel-in-distress Olive Oyl, a human spring, wide-eyed and cheeky. Duvall pulls off a trick: she holds on to her humanity while playing a clown and upstages Williams in every scene. Six months earlier, she screamed for her life in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.