Popeye

Maverick director Robert Altman's career has been a succession of hits and misses, and this 1980 musical was a Bluto-sized miss. Entrusted with a big-budget family film based on a beloved cartoon character, Altman--masses be damned--chose not to compromise his often off-putting idiosyncratic style. On the plus side, this was a pioneering attempt to adapt a comic strip and cartoon universe to live-action: the seaside town of Sweethaven is a marvel of production design, and in the Altman canon, it is as cockeyed a community as the 4077th in M*A*S*H or the Presbyterian church in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and filled with memorably quirky characters. In his first film, Robin Williams keeps his gag reflex in check as Popeye, who is searching for "me poppa," who abandoned him (the sailor man's mumbled asides are perfectly attuned to Williams's improvisational style), while Shelley Duvall is ideally cast as Olive Oyl. But Altman directs with a heavy hand, Jules Feiffer's script is wilted spinach, and Harry Nilsson's songs are all but unlistenable (although Duvall's rendition of "He Needs Me" was put to endearingly quirky use in Punch-Drunk Love). Although extra-less, this reasonably solid widescreen DVD presentation is, for what it's worth, leaps and bounds ahead of the confused VHS pan-and-scan version. Not recommended. (K. Lee Benson)