I yam what I yam, Altman's 80s Popeye movie.

I loved that movie as a kid, because I love Robin Williams. Have no idea if it holds up but I remember the scenery most of all.

I absolutely love Altman’s work, right up there with Kubrick, Lynch, the Coens. But Popeye was pretty much his worst work, even worse than Dr. T and the Women.

It’s no O.C. and Stiggs, that’s for damn sure.

I don’t think it holds up as an entertaining kids movie, (if it ever did) but I found watching it as an adult pretty amusing just because it’s so dang weird but lovingly crafted. As @JoshL noted, there’s a ton of detail in the sets and wardrobes, there’s some legitimately funny bits, but mostly it’s so freaking odd overall that’s it’s a wonder to behold.

If you were, like me, a fan of Popeye as a kid, that movie is a must see… or at least, it was when I was a kid, and now it has a lot of nostalgia.

Robin Williams is freaking amazing as Popeye though.

It’s a kind of existentially disturbing film. Like watching people LARPing American comic characters from the 30’s on an abandoned coral lump in the bright sunshine in the middle of the Aegean. It’s not that’s it’s live action, it’s just that weird quality of character actors too dedicated to break the 4th wall and a modern film too colorful and present to not break it, set on a set that looks like a stage production brought to life yet clearly actually exists somewhere out there.

This is fricking awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Re Popeye being Altman’s worst, the film at least has defenders and a Harry Nilsson soundtrack. He’s was very prolific and there’s lots I haven’t seen, but I would suspect stuff like Beyond Therapy or Quintet are the bottom of the barrel. People are completely indifferent to them.

I had forgotten this film existed, and I saw it! About all I remember is Robin Williams and Shelly Duval pulling off their characters well enough, but the film wasn’t all that interesting. I have no idea of the plot now.

He kinda had to be, can you imagine 80s cinema and telling the casting director, “Okay, we need somebody who’s funny and has massive forearms.” It wasn’t like Schwarzenegger was going to do it. Obviously there’s tons of prosthetics but Williams had a body that was unique at the time. See also: World According to Garp.

It also wasn’t the first time, IIRC, for Williams and Duvall to work together, I remember a Show of the Week thing back then where they did The Princess and the Frog, he had some kind of line like where he was trying to say “Sweet Dreams” and said, Sweet Riddeet!"

The shit that you remember from when you were young . . .

Last night if you had told me that one of my favorite things I’d read tomorrow would be people talking about Robert Altman’s Popeye, I wouldn’t have believed you.

-Tom

And often memory fails, it was Teri Garr, not Duvall. I swear she was in another episode of the same show (Princess and the Pea, maybe?), but I did remember the line correctly:

Edit: Nope, that was Liza Minelli. Back to “where did I see this?” what show was it with Shelly Duvall where she was wearing some ridiculous headdress, Victorian mushroom thing, and being all Shelly Duvall about it?

Double edit: I had no idea, Duvall actually conceived and helmed the entire series, as well as a few others. I always thought her a B list occasional actor, but she had some serious industry action back then.

I loved that show as a kid. The Rip Van Winkle episode in particular, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, stylistically is a precursor to his Dracula adaptation, with inspired optical effects and silent cinema-style in-camera trickery. I enjoy how deliberately artificial it looks, kinda like Rohmer’s deliberately stagey Perceval (1978).

This forum always delivers :)

I saw this as a kid too, whatever it was.

LordKosc has seen this movie well over a dozen times. I was a huge Popeye fan as a kid. I even like mushy canned spinach today!

Several times over the years I have heard and read that this movie is truer to the original strip because Popeye hates spinach.

But I’ve read every single strip EC Segar published from Popeye’s debut as a minor character in Thimble Theater until Segar’s death, and I’m here to tell you that in the strip Popeye did NOT hate spinach. It wasn’t a magic potion like in the cartoons, where it gives him a massive strength boost; rather, he is strong all the time, and it’s because he eats lots of spinach. He periodically advises the children reading to eat spinach and drink milk (and stand up straight, etc. etc.). The only Popeye I’ve ever heard of where Popeye hates spinach is this movie.

Origin story, you always have to make the main driving force the original foil! Funny though how such a remarkably forgettable yet unforgettable movie brings it back for so many.

I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today. :)

Also in keeping with the OT title:

The Punch Drunk Love soundtrack includes a song from Popeye:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oBVcuinfZ4c

Time Bandits?