Working my way through Robert Altman's back catalogue, I decided to risk another look at his chaotic and largely unintelligible Popeye, which I'd not seen for many years, though I'd once somehow ended up owning the soundtrack album (exclusively for Van Dyke Parks' contributions).
I keep on hearing it's worth a reappraisal, and in some ways it is, since it's such an oddity, and so well made in a number of secondary areas: the photography and sets are amazing, successfully bringing to life the fantasy seaside town of Millhaven. The fight scenes are also great fun, recreating the kind of far-fetched, physically impossible comedy violence of the cartoons well. Every corner you peek at is filled with loving detail.
What goes wrong, really, is the story, the songs, and most of all the dialogue. Robin Williams looks the part, but his entire role is incomprehensible and overdubbed so close to the microphone he sounds in every scene as though his drunken, muttering head is resting upon your shoulder. Since none of the other characters sound this way (or at least not this bad), it creates an uncomfortable, frustrating and disorientating atmosphere that continually breaks the spell throughout.
The rest of the cast look fine, too, especially Shelley Duvall, who physically was born to play Olive Oyl, but that's about as far as it goes. If there IS some good dialogue, it's lost through the rambling delivery and haphazard structure. And practically none of it is funny. It strikes me it would actually have been much better as a silent film.
The sloppiness of Altman's style, with everyone talking over each other, and the camera lurching around, turns out to be an absolute catastrophe when it comes to the tight precision and coordination necessary to carry off a Hollywood musical, and Popeye is a musical filled with songs it's impossible to sing along with. The first Robin Williams tune, "Blow Me Down" is so mumbled and meandering that it's impossible to even follow, let alone hum. The only one which really works and remains memorable is Olive Oyl singing "He Needs Me", since it has a shape and a simplicity and a repeated melody that enables it to stick in the mind. The rest of them, like the rest of the film, need subtitles just to be able to grasp most of what is being said at all, even though there's nothing all that much *wrong* with the songs themselves, just the delivery.
One gets the feeling that, with such an amazing setting, cast and detailed craftsmanship, all this film needed was a tighter, more professional and less self-indulgent direction to pull off something as loveable and entertaining as, say, the first Pirates of The Caribbean.
And so the responsibility has to lie squarely on Altman's shoulders that it was the enormous failure it turned out to be, and it now seems entirely understandable why the studios didn't want to throw money at him anymore for awhile.
I keep on hearing it's worth a reappraisal, and in some ways it is, since it's such an oddity, and so well made in a number of secondary areas: the photography and sets are amazing, successfully bringing to life the fantasy seaside town of Millhaven. The fight scenes are also great fun, recreating the kind of far-fetched, physically impossible comedy violence of the cartoons well. Every corner you peek at is filled with loving detail.
What goes wrong, really, is the story, the songs, and most of all the dialogue. Robin Williams looks the part, but his entire role is incomprehensible and overdubbed so close to the microphone he sounds in every scene as though his drunken, muttering head is resting upon your shoulder. Since none of the other characters sound this way (or at least not this bad), it creates an uncomfortable, frustrating and disorientating atmosphere that continually breaks the spell throughout.
The rest of the cast look fine, too, especially Shelley Duvall, who physically was born to play Olive Oyl, but that's about as far as it goes. If there IS some good dialogue, it's lost through the rambling delivery and haphazard structure. And practically none of it is funny. It strikes me it would actually have been much better as a silent film.
The sloppiness of Altman's style, with everyone talking over each other, and the camera lurching around, turns out to be an absolute catastrophe when it comes to the tight precision and coordination necessary to carry off a Hollywood musical, and Popeye is a musical filled with songs it's impossible to sing along with. The first Robin Williams tune, "Blow Me Down" is so mumbled and meandering that it's impossible to even follow, let alone hum. The only one which really works and remains memorable is Olive Oyl singing "He Needs Me", since it has a shape and a simplicity and a repeated melody that enables it to stick in the mind. The rest of them, like the rest of the film, need subtitles just to be able to grasp most of what is being said at all, even though there's nothing all that much *wrong* with the songs themselves, just the delivery.
One gets the feeling that, with such an amazing setting, cast and detailed craftsmanship, all this film needed was a tighter, more professional and less self-indulgent direction to pull off something as loveable and entertaining as, say, the first Pirates of The Caribbean.
And so the responsibility has to lie squarely on Altman's shoulders that it was the enormous failure it turned out to be, and it now seems entirely understandable why the studios didn't want to throw money at him anymore for awhile.