TheLittleSongbird
'Popeye the Sailor' is a good debut for Popeye, but there have been better cartoons of his since.There is not much wrong with it. There is a finding its feet/style feel, and there is a preference to the voice actors who would take on the roles later. Popeye and Bluto were fine courtesy of William Costello and William Pennell, but Bonnie Poe's voice agreed (from personal opinion this is) doesn't really fit Olive Oyl, and it was strange hearing a deeper voice when so used to Mae Questel's pretty iconic interpretation.On the other hand, the animation is beautifully drawn, smooth and meticulously detailed, the black and white crisply shaded. The music is merry and energetic, though again am more familiar with the scoring of Winston Sharples later.It's a very entertaining cartoon and smartly written, with a lot of charm and energy. All three lead characters are engaging and their personalities established well even for so early on. Betty Boop makes a small but memorable appearance, that's both sexy and cute.All in all, a very good debut cartoon but not among my favourite Popeye cartoons. 8/10 Bethany Cox
A_Different_Drummer
In his day Dave Fleischer was the best of the best when it came to animation. The Nicola Tesla of cartoons if you like. (No, younger readers, that does not mean he made CARS). Some of the other reviewers nailed it when they pointed out, with props to both men, that, frame by frame Fleischer was better than Disney. (Of course, a century later, more or less, we see that Disney was the better businessman, which is why your kids aren't bugging you for a vacation to FleischerLand). The animation, the cell work, was astonishing. The concepts were astonishing. The blending of music and action were astonishing. Believe it or not, late in his career Fleischer experimented with a strange kind of "3D animation" (intended of course for 2D projection on theatre screens SINCE TV HAD NOT EVEN BEEN INVENTED.) And a decade after this film, he did a Superman cartoon which, as other reviewers on IMDb have acknowledged, was decades ahead of its time, and holds up well even for viewing today. Wow. What an artist.
John T. Ryan
ALWAYS on the lookout for new material and fresh "faces" to bring to their animated films, the Brothers Fleischer, Max and Dave, had apparently struck some sort of deal with Hearst's King Features Syndicate to bring some of their humorous comic strips to the screen.* Consequently we saw the likes of 'HENRY' by Carl Anderson, 'THE LITTLE KING' by Otto Soglow and the runaway hit character from E.Z. Segar's THIMBLE THEATER Comic Strip, POPEYE.RECIPROCALLY perhaps, King Features distributed a BETTY BOOP Comic Strip in the 1930s; which was credited to Max Fleischer, but most likely was ghosted by others.EXPERIMENTATION with the newspaper strips was limited to these three; but only the only one to come around to the full fruition** for the Fleischer Brothers, Paramount Pictures Corporation and We, the People, was the gruff, squinty-eyed, bow-legged, nearly bald, red-headed, ham fisted scrapper of a seaman, Popeye, Himself. *** THE first cartoon, titled POPEYE THE SAILOR (Fleischer Studios/Paramount Pictures, 1933), was officially part of the BETTY BOOP Series; although Miss Betty graciously defers to the Spinach Man, taking a supporting, almost cameo, sort of a part as a Hula Dancing Girl at the carnival, which was the setting for the story.AMAZINGLY, this initial outing seemingly contained all of the basic elements that were Popeye stuff, right from the start. It was almost as if it was a sort of genetic code for cinematic productions; with all that would come later over the next 6 decades being present in primitive form in the very first outing.OUR STORY: Popeye meets up with Olive Oyl (they're obviously already 'goin' steady.') as he disembarks his ship for some much needed shore leave. Bluto shows up to provide some rivalry and the means of providing some fisticuffs. Miss Boop as we said before, comes in well into the second half of the picture; but manages to get in some really neat hoofing with Popeye, both being products of the Fleischers' Patented Rotoscope Process.**** REALLY, Schultz, that's about it; of course it's all embellished with plenty of those famous sight-gags, for which Director Dave Fleischer had become so well known.NONE of the other cast of Mr. Segar's characters from the strip make an appearance. There's no Roughhouse, no Wimpy, no Swea' Pea. Missing in action are Castor Oyl (Olive's brother), Sea Hag, Poop Deck Pappy and Eugene, the Jeep. However, they would all be highly visible in future cartoons, coming series in Popeye's venerable and prolific cinematic output.THE cast of voice actors was a little different than what we later would become used to. Popeye and Olive were rendered by William Costello and Bonnie Poe. Mae Questel was there, but did her usual Betty Boop; but not Olive, yet. Jack Mercer hadn't signed on as Popeye until some time later; although we did view a print of this cartoon that apparently had been re-dubbed with Mr. Mercer's unmistakable rendition of the Sailor Man's golden tones.BIZARRE is the only way that to describe many of the supporting characters; be they part of a carnival crowd or one of Popeye's co-worker sailors taking their shore leave. It seemed to be out of place (at least to this writer) to have the being anthropomorphic funny animals. Whereas this , we're certain, had been a common practice in the BETTY BOOP world, no POPEYE picture ever would repeat its use; opting for adherence to the principle of depicting only humans (and Parrots) as talkers.NOTE: * King Features' adventure strip properties such as TIM TYLER'S LUCK, JUNGLE JIM and FLASH GORDON were adapted to the screen by Universal Pictures as Cliff-Hanging Serials.NOTE: ** Oddly enough, the one cartoon "Star" Fleischer Studios had copyright on was Miss BETTY BOOP, herself. Their two most successful series were the All Color SUPERMAN Cartoons of the 1940's (owned by D.C./National Comics) and our guy, POPEYE (Hearst's King Features Syndicate).NOTE: *** Yeah, Schultz, just the same as yours truly, Popeye is a Red Head, poor guy! NOTE: **** The ROTOSCOPE is an animation production device of MAX & DAVE FLEISCHER'S which is used to make realistic animated movement by allowing animators to trace individual frames of film of live action persons and animals even.POODLE SCHNITZ!!
ccthemovieman-1
Wow, it's interesting to see how different this first Popeye cartoon was from all the others we are used to seeing. Right off the in the introduction, other - not Popeye - is singing a "Strike Up the Band" song. Actually, we find out it's a "Betty Boop" as Betty joins in the singing, with a similar lyric about it "being a cinch that every inch he's a sailor."Popeye came from the comic strips, so the first thing we see when the story begins in a newspaper headline reading, "Popeye A Movie Star," meaning the audience will now see him at the movie theater. (There was no television back then.)Anyway, just watching the first few minutes of this cartoon produced a big smile on my face. It's tough to beat these clever, funny 1930s Popeye cartoons. The combination of sight gags and music - they loved music in cartoons and movies back in the '30s - is guaranteed to make you feel good after watching.Popeye demonstrates his strength, dexterity and resourcefulness in his screen debut and it's quickly established Bluto is the enemy and wants Olive. That storyline went on for decades but was always fun to see as the sailor man bested the bearded bully time after time.Betty only has a small number in here, so even if the cartoon is under name, it's really Popeye's. Betty does a quick Hawaiian dance which she did in several other cartoons before they made her put more clothes on by the end of 1934.The only thing different was Bonnie Poe doing some voice work as Olive. Her voice was a lot lower than Mae Questel's who did Olive for most, if not all, of the other cartoons. Mae also did Betty Boop, and my guess is they didn't want the same voice for both characters in the same cartoon.Also, Popeye's answer to everything was a punch, destroying whatever he hit....even a train! He's always ready to show his stuff, but a little more so than normal in this debut cartoon. This guy was punching everybody and everything, and so was Olive! In later cartoons, Popeye entertained us more with his clever remarks and reinventing of words. However, you can see from this early cartoon that it's no surprise this comic strip character made it big "in the movies."
