Took me several days to finish it; I kept reaching the end of my patience after ten or fifteen minutes and turning it off again. Not so sure getting to the end was that important, but I was morbidly curious to see how much worse it would get after such an abysmal beginning.
I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer who said that if you're going to do a musical, at least have the decency to have good songs. Every single one here is a loser, and a few perky, well-staged numbers may well have helped immeasurably. Some are worse than others, of course... Olive's "He Needs Me" may be the worst of the bunch, consisting mostly of "he needs me... he needs me... da da da da da da... he needs me... da da da..." The funereal "Sweet Sweethaven" stinks too, and then they go and use it more than once... thanks, folks. How did the feature-film musical version of "Li'l Abner" get everything so right bringing a cartoon world to life, and these people got everything so wrong?
Credit where it's due: Robin Williams does a very good job in a difficult role, and his singing voice is actually pretty good. Shelley Duval can't carry a tune in a bucket... not that they give her much of a tune to try and carry in the first place... but I'll give her this: she sure looked the part. But if Jack Nicholson had showed up to chase her off the set with an axe, I wouldn't have minded.
One thing that translated really, really badly from animation: towards the end when semi-conscious Popeye has some canned spinach dumped into his mouth. Ugh. That was always a fun scene in a cartoon, but in real life there's nothing fun about watching a huge glob of lukewarm canned spinach land with a splot in an actor's wide-open mouth; the stuff is pretty disgusting on its own and that just took the cake. I almost gagged.
One of my favorite character actors, Richard Libertini, was the thing I tried to focus on every time I felt myself losing the will to live. If he hadn't been there in the background so consistently, I might have just given up ten minutes in. He and Williams were the only decent things on the screen.
If this isn't in the Bottom 100, someone should re-check the math.
I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer who said that if you're going to do a musical, at least have the decency to have good songs. Every single one here is a loser, and a few perky, well-staged numbers may well have helped immeasurably. Some are worse than others, of course... Olive's "He Needs Me" may be the worst of the bunch, consisting mostly of "he needs me... he needs me... da da da da da da... he needs me... da da da..." The funereal "Sweet Sweethaven" stinks too, and then they go and use it more than once... thanks, folks. How did the feature-film musical version of "Li'l Abner" get everything so right bringing a cartoon world to life, and these people got everything so wrong?
Credit where it's due: Robin Williams does a very good job in a difficult role, and his singing voice is actually pretty good. Shelley Duval can't carry a tune in a bucket... not that they give her much of a tune to try and carry in the first place... but I'll give her this: she sure looked the part. But if Jack Nicholson had showed up to chase her off the set with an axe, I wouldn't have minded.
One thing that translated really, really badly from animation: towards the end when semi-conscious Popeye has some canned spinach dumped into his mouth. Ugh. That was always a fun scene in a cartoon, but in real life there's nothing fun about watching a huge glob of lukewarm canned spinach land with a splot in an actor's wide-open mouth; the stuff is pretty disgusting on its own and that just took the cake. I almost gagged.
One of my favorite character actors, Richard Libertini, was the thing I tried to focus on every time I felt myself losing the will to live. If he hadn't been there in the background so consistently, I might have just given up ten minutes in. He and Williams were the only decent things on the screen.
If this isn't in the Bottom 100, someone should re-check the math.