I met Robin Williams while he was on the USO tour for the troops in the Middle East.. I was his escort driver with a couple of other celebs...while we were in the car he asked everyone about their favorite movie of his, of course everyone said Mrs. Doubtfire, but when he asked me I said it was Popeye...He thanked me and teared up alittle.. he said no one as ever said Popeye... I told him that movie made my childhood...Robin Williams was on awesome actor and a really nice person... RIP Robin.. we love you
Shelly Duvall as Olive Oyl was possibly the best casting in the movie. She really brought the character to life by completely selling Oyl's klutzy yet graceful movement, and she also did an excellent job with the character's voice.
She was born to place this part. I loved Popeye cartoons, as a kid, still do. I loved spinach, and it was a very good thing, since I was a low iron , and Vit K kid. I now enjoy fresh and frozen spinach, but back then canned spinach was pretty much all you could get ( it was the 50s, shoot me). Eugene was one of my favorites. Thanks Minty!!
This movie means a lot to me. My grandfather was the Maltese doctor who treated Robin whilst he was in hospital. He got a photograph with him and the rest of the crew. Robin Williams is one of my biggest inspirations so to know that my grandad met him makes me very proud
As a man who watched the cartoons with his eldest brother I definitely agree, she was absolutely perfect as Olive Oyl. ❤ And I have to give a shout out to my childhood icon Robin Williams, he definitely nailed Popeye's mannerisms as seen in the theatrical shorts.
I loved this movie when it came out. Really dig the song "I'm mean". I was 5 at the time, my standards were low. still enjoy the film every once in awhile.
It was sung by Isaac Hayes if you didn’t know that already. When my house got flooded I sang that song while I gutted my house. 😄 My wife was like WTF?
I think I was around 14 when I first caught it on TV. I couldn't finish it because of the musical aspect. I love how great Williams was as Popeye. They couldn't have cast a better person for the role.
My favorite Robin Williams movie! I thought it was brilliant from the casting, to the set, to the quirky music. I watched the cartoons when I was a kid & still do (thanks METV) and this movie brought the characters to life for me. 🥰
Shelley Duvall was the best choice for olive oil and also the perfect transfer from a comic book character a to live action film! The movie also was one of the best adaptations from comic-animated to a live action release that respected from walt disney back in the day,unlike some other movies such as inspector gadget!!!
Acting across the board was great. Shelly Duvall moved like a cartoon figure, bendind in almost inhuman ways. And Ray Walston as Pappy is seriously underrated.
And Bill Irwin! He was also with Robin Williams in the Don't Worry Be Happy music video, and I remember seeing him on the Cosby Show when I was a kid. "Bending in almost inhuman ways" definitely describes Bill Irwin! 😆
@@marcoantoniogarcia8576That's the problem - you wouldn't settle for anything less than the real comic strip Popeye characters. My standards weren't that high, so I enjoyed it more.
This is one of my top 5 all-time favorite movies. Something Minty didn't mention was that Feiffer adapted it from the COMIC STRIP (Thimble Theater) , not the cartoons (aside from the spinach part). It captures PERFECTLY the mood and characters of the comic strip. Thimble Theater was sort of a comedy/adventure strip with with some storylines taking sometimes weeks to complete. Popeye wasn't even the star, at first. Olive's boyfriend Ham Salad was. Popeye was just a sailor they hired to sail them to an adventure, and proved so popular that he stayed around and became the focus of the strip.
Bluto was a very minor character in the comic strip and only appeared in one story. If it was supposed to be based on the comic strip, then Bluto shouldn't have been the main antagonist. And Olive's former boyfriend was Harold Hamgravy. Ham Salad was the Han Solo character in the Star Wars spoof, Hardware Wars.
@@KasumiKenshirou Ham Gravy was present in the movie. He was the guy in the brown suit chasing his runaway hat around. The payoff of that gag came during the lead-in to Bluto's publicly destructive outburst of the Oyl household in the song "I'm Mean", during which Bluto roughly jams Ham's hat onto his head & starts literally pushing him into the ground out of seething anger at Olive Oyl for ducking out of their arranged marriage.
The film also baited fans in with a teaser opener using the "Sailor's Hornpipe" theme & the ship cabin doorway intro that began most of the Fleischer _Popeye_ cartoons that ended with a meta joke from _Popeye_ voice actor Jack Mercer, whereby the cartoon Popeye pops out from below the hull of the ship, saying in his trademarked garbled mutter, "Hey, what's this, one of Bluto's tricks? I'm in the wrong movie!" before a lightning flash and clap of thunder served as thunderstorm sound effects as well as an audio-visual transition from the bouncy cartoon world of the animated _Popeye_ drawn by the Fleischer's to a live-action adaptation of E. G. Segar's Thimble Theater comic strip (albeit, done in Harry Nilsson musical form).
I’ll never understand why people crap on this movie so much. I loved it in the theater as a kid and I still enjoy it a lot. And the music is my favorite part! The songs are brilliant and catchy as hell. I still get the Sweethaven National Anthem stuck in my head regularly. Here are some aspects of this movie that I think are top notch: • The casting! Popeye, Olive, Pappy, Wimpy, Bluto and others were perfectly cast. • The sets. It still blows me away that they built the whole town and it looks exactly like a Popeye cartoon. • The costumes. Not enough is said about the look of the characters. • The Music. Harry Nilsson’s songs were GREAT! Some of the most catchy and clever tunes ever written for a family film and I actually like how they were performed on set. To me it makes it much more seamless of a transition when the characters go into song than in tradition musicals where the sound quality suddenly changes drastically. I wish more musicals were filmed like Popeye.
My thoughts on it is that the actors nailed their roles perfectly. But the story was so weak and lame, the actors' skills just couldn't carry the film. If they had better writing to work with, it could have been a blockbuster hit; or at least a little more beloved among Popeye fans.
@@davidlafleche1142 Spinach is a major pickup from the Fleischer cartoons. In the original cartoon strip, Elzie Segar briefly went with the power of spinach but dropped it because it was a dead-end joke which was not that funny. With Dave Fleischer, it became the go-to and Deus Ex Machina to resolve a story. Many of the stories where when things went south, how hard was it going to be for Popeye to get the almighty can of spinach?
"He Needs Me" sang by Shelley Duvall has been one of my fav songs to listen to whenever I've fallen in love since I was a teenager. My daughter loves this movie. She's 7 and we play the soundtrack in the car on repeat.
I was 14 when this movie came out, not exactly target audience as I was neither a child nor a parent. But I loved it! I think the casting was perfect, the set for Sweet Haven was beautiful, and though it didn't have to be a musical, I thought it was ... OK. Also, Ray Walston as Pappy deserves some credit. He really nailed it.
I was a fan of the Popeye cartoons as a child in the '60s and was glad to see the movie. I was surprised at how well it emulated the cartoons' oddness of tone. The cartoon characters were well represented by the cast.
@@andreberryii7037 Disney's _George of the Jungle_ (the first in 1997, not the sequel) stayed reasonably faithful to its source. By comparison, Disney's take on _Underdog_ sunk like a lead balloon.
Yeah I went on a boat trip past the village around 2004/5. I couldn't believe it was still there after all this time! I've never even seen the film (at least not that I can remember) with it seemingly being a far from popular film in the UK. We used to have plenty of old kids films like Pete's Dragon, Bedknobs And Broomsticks, Flash Gordon etc, but I never remember Popeye being shown on TV when I was a kid or since.
@@keithpl5438 Minty is Australian and two young to remember the original SNL cast. He must have assumed some silent G pronunciation having never heard the name. It really did sound odd though..
The music absolutely makes this movie! I had the soundtrack on vinyl and almost wore the thing out I played it so much. I didn't know it was sung live on-set, everyone was agog when Les Mis did it, this movie was ahead of its time!
Robert Altman had a fantastic sense of music in his films. Who would have thought to pick Harry Nilsson to write the songs for Popeye? Then there's McCabe & Mrs Miller, with its inspired integration of the haunting Leonard Cohen songs, Nashville -- in which almost all of the actors wrote their own songs -- and Kansas City, where the music played by the spectacular jazz band in the club acts as the "spine" of the movie.
Dick Tracy was probably one of my all time favorite films ever. It was fun colorful and wasn't intended to be taken very seriously. The characters were so interesting and some well. Forsythe did an incredible job as Flattop. All the villains were spot on.
"Dick Tracy" would've benefitted greatly from Tracy being played by Dick Gautier (Hymie from TV's "Get Smart"). Guess he just wasn't much of a famous name.
I remember at school when my mind wanders I'm seeing "It's not easy being me, or God will always bless Sweethaven. among others just as memorable as Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
And "He Needs Me" being recast in Punch-Drunk Love *swooon*. I mean, I don't even like musicals, but most the songs raised the film up from quirky to endearing.
I think it’s such an underrated movie, and I ADORE the musical aspects actually. I didn’t know Nilssen had written the music, which explains a lot to me why I’ve always liked it so much. But Shelley Duvall singing “He Needs Me” is a clear standout, and I love that it was used in the movie Punch Drunk Love.
All of the cast for the movie was perfect. Bluto was my favorite character, he was comically angry all the time and everyone feared him like if he was an angry bear. Bluto's hilarious rage at the party was the best part of the movie, it is a wonder that the whole house did not explode from his radiating rage.
I think one of the stand out musical numbers in this movie is "He's Large", and Shelley Duvall made the most of Olive not being able to think of many (any?) good things to say about Bluto.
The man from My Favorite Martian!? That's crazy! 😃 I remember seeing him in the Disney adaptation of My Favorite Martian and discovering years later that he's from the OG series. ❤
I was a senior in high school when the movie came out and I never went to see it thinking it stupid...I just watched it last night in full and enjoyed it 41 yrs later
Robin Williams characterization of Popeye was truly great. I have re-watched this just for how well and marvelously he played the character. Shelley Duvall, as Olive Oyl was also a great characterization. The movie made me look into the original "Thimble Theater" comic strips.
THAT'S IT!! I always got an odd, familiar vibe from this movie that I could never quite put my finger on; your comment hit home to me just what it was lingering in my subconscious.
I love this film, I remember watching it with my dad. Now I watch it with my little girl. It's fun well acted and doesn't remove you from immersion. It's not a critics film. It's a family film to watch with everyone.
I didn't have Showtime but I do remember that show. I had HBO. It was Fraggle Rock for me...until OZ & The Wire came out, anyway. But even Fraggle Rock was better than Popeye! Then Soprano's came out and, well...forget about it!!! lol 😎👍
Harry Nilsson was a great musical talent and writer. I loved what he wrote for the movie Popeye. As well as what he wrote for Midnight Cowboy (Everybody’s Talking at me) and The Movie The Point ( Me and my Arrow) He also wrote “One” ( is the loneliness number) made famous by Three Dog Night and Coconut ( put the lime in the Coconut) as well as Garden Party. We lost him too soon at the early age of 52.
"I yam what I yam!" My favorite song from Popeye & Robin Williams' musical performance. That movie got my attention of Robin Williams for the first time when I was very young. Thank u Robin & RIP❤❤❤
This is a true masterpiece. I'm not kidding. It is one of the two films that I literally adore that I can't find anyone else who likes it. The other being Joe vs. The Volcano.
I loved this movie as a kid & now when I watch it, it just keeps getting better every time. They did an awesome job making a live action movie feel like a cartoon.
This is a damn classic! Williams was an absolute great choice to bring our boy Popeye to life on the big screen and I may not be the biggest fan of the musical side but the song I yam what I yam is a damn gem! "I ain't no physikist but I knows what matters"
I didn’t think I would like this movie, but I really did. 👍 Definitely(pretty please, with sugar on top)do a vid on Dragonslayer, that would be awesome!
Did you know that Paul Smith who played Bluto was actually doing a movie as well as Popeye He said that Robin Williams was actually a very talented and nice person
On my husband's account- I saw this in the theater too :)) Great improv on the part of Robin Williams as he's in front of the baby reading the letter....the baby says,baby & He's like,"yeah,that's what it says right here you're a baby." Always witty & more R.I.P. Robin
@@Volturis-lu3jm Are you kidding? Visual special effects are sometimes the ONLY thing that saves a movie these days. Unless you're (not you specifically, a general "you're") one of those people who looks for things to hate in a movie/show/book first, and things to like last, which is a really sad way to be. And I'm in a fandom that is currently inundated with non-fans, still trying to call themselves fans of something they said they loved but now claim to hate, and they're hating first and watching after, which is a pathetic and really miserable way to live. They watch JUST to find things to complain about, ignoring the fact that change, acceptance of change and new ideas are, and always have been, main pillars of the show. And they're also missing out on a helluva lot of good stuff. Robin wasn't a sell-out, nor would he ever "need the money" as he was a successful and working star since the 70s.
This is what started off "Faerie Tale Theater", I believe. Shelley asked Robin if he'd play the Frog Prince in a TV series she was producing and the rest is history.
I loved the Popeye cartoons when I was a kid and this movie, I loved equally. It's great fun to watch and Robin Williams is always a win for me. He nailed the performance in my opinion.
I wonder what the movie would have been like with out the musical bits. It did drag at times. But Robin was a great Popeye. I think it could have been better but I enjoyed it when I saw it as a kid.
I saw it in theaters when I was a young kid. I remember really liking it back then. I haven't watched in years but Robin Williams was spot on as Popeye in my humble opinion.
This is one of the first movies I can remember seeing in a movie theater when I was a kid. I remember thinking it was really weird, but liking the music and Robin Williams as Popeye. Anybody else remember seeing this movie in a theater when it first came out?
Sucks that this is your first movie experience memory...Mine was Star Wars in '77... This one just creeped me out. I kept thinking I wanted to go back to see Dark Crystal again instead...Kids are spoiled these days!
Yes, in fact it's the very first movie i remember going to see at the theater. I was in Kindergarten and i remember seeing one of my classmates standing in line to see it too. He and I talked about the movie at school the next day. We ended up becoming best friends throughout our elementary years.
My dad took me to see this very movie in 1980, and as a kid it was awesome. When you're 5 years old, walk into a theater and smell that popcorn, only to have that same theater go dark and the movies starts....I shit you not it's magic.
This is a great movie that my dad and I watched many times as I was growing up. Every time it came on we would tune in and watch. I always thought the songs in it were catchy and the movie is very quotable.
Paramount Pictures are no longer owns the rights of Popeye the Sailor cartoons originally released from 1933-1957 in which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer through United Artists' Associated Artists Productions owns the TV rights for Popeye theatrical cartoons and currently, Warner Bros. Entertainment through Turner Entertainment now currently owns the rights in which part of most of United Artists library materials including a.a.p. (especially Popeye cartoons) with King Features Entertainment Co-owns the rights of the original comic strip characters, while Paramount Pictures, the same company who brought Popeye cartoons from 1933-1957 remains the rights for 1980 Popeye musical feature with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures handling International distribution rights.
Lenny Pearl no, as far as I know (having played the video game Dragon’s Lair) and obsessively watching what I could find of the cartoon and the movie Dragonslayer’s story line is vastly different. No characters named Dirk. Good eye you’ve got though, you’d think it would have been a natural connection.
@@Ireneharnack1138 Yeah I've played the game back in the day, and even have it on my PS4, but it was a shock to me when I saw the pic in the video that the title looked like the exact same font! Plus, admittedly, even as having grown up in the 80s, I've never heard of Dragonslayer til now, so you can see how one might think it must be more than a coincidence that the Dragon's Lair font is almost exactly the same, and that the name sounds like it was a word play on the movie title! :-) I wonder if Don Bluth was inspired by the movie
You want a link between "Dragonslayer" movie and "Dragon's Lair" the game? How 'bout Don Bluth, who was a chief animator at Di$ney until he walked away from the company in the late 1970's due to the total crappy direction the company went, then went on to create "Dragon's Lair" in 1983 =)
Why would they throw a FULL can of spinach at his head, in close up, in that scene? Did not one person have the thought, "gee, maybe would should use an empty can in that shot!"
Although such a precaution does make sense regardless, my guess would be that maybe the can was supposed to land in the water right in front of Popeye, but the thrower's aim was off.
I'm one of a small group of people that absolutely LOVE this movie. Including the soundtrack! It always bummed me out that Williams and Altman talked bad about it. As far as I'm concerned, there couldn't have been more loving care for this movie. And it simply has to be the best casted movie I have ever seen in my life! Duval as Olive, Walston as Poopdeck Pappy, Paul Dooley as Wimpy... I mean, best casting director ever! I actually feel the music helped to lengthen the movie and guide the story. 'Cause Popeye was always just shorts of him more or less rescuing Olive from Bluto or Sea Hags or whatnot. Doesn't really translate to film. So they honestly did the best they could with the source material and I believe it worked out beautifully! This movie will always be close to my heart. I never knew Gilda and Dustin were the initial choices for the leads. Gilda could have worked as Olive, but Dustin wouldn't have worked at all. And honestly, who else but Robin Williams could do the lead?! Only person I can think of is Chris Diamantopoulos. But he would have been only five years old back then. If they did a sequel, he would be perfect! Thank you soooo much for doing this video Minty!
I've always found the movie to be somewhat memorable and fun, but also a bit dull at times, and can agree the musical aspects don't work as well as they should. In fact the climax for me is the only part of the movie that really feels like the cartoon. Worth seeing for the cast, if nothing else.
I agree, the last 20 minutes is indeed the best part. Just for being devoid of yet another lackluster musical number, it scores extra points. But I've always felt it a missed opportunity that just as the movie finally gets going, it ends.
Harry Nilsson also wrote the music for Otto Preminger's dreadful LSD "comedy" SKIDOO, a legendarily bad movie from the late '60s and a must-see. Harry even SINGS all of the film credits at the end!
@@yankeeclipper4326 Oh man, I love that movie. So weird, and yet so entertaining. I love the music, but then, my mom is a huge fan of Harry Nilsson so I grew up listening to his music
I actually liked the movie, especially the food song scene (every day it's food). My favorite quote is Popeye looking for his pappy in the boat saying "I know you isn't in here, now where isn't ya?"
@Boyd Merriman did you know that the actor who played Pappy was the same old man who played the martian in "My Favorite Martian" TV show. He also played the teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in '82
I think it’s all still there as a tourist attraction, I remember seeing a video about it within the last couple years... Edit: lol he covers this fact here ;)
I remember seeing this in the theatre. I was 8. I thought it being a musical was odd at the time. The weirdest part for me was seeing Popeye with hair...lol. Hey Minty, I would love to see you do Moscow on the Hudson. Another great but overlooked Robin Williams film
Thumbs Down. This guy's videos should be called, "10 things you can find with a quick google search about..." All "10 things You didn't know" are mostly taken from the Wikipedia page and IMDB page trivia section of the film. All of this guy's videos are like that.
The pace early on in the movie is kind of tough to stick with. I started thinking about it this way: The set and production, with the musical aspect, made it feel more like a stage production than a movie. I got the sense that if you could keep up with the zaniness going on for the whole village, it would help with the pacing from an audience perspective. I thought the scenes with PopEye's dad were absolutely brilliant, and I thought the actor that played his dad did a great job of keeping up with Williams. The end of the movie is definitely the strongest part. Williams did a masterful job of adding the muttered jokes that permeated the original cartoon. Half of PopEye is trying to keep up with the under-the-breath witticisms that are constantly coming from PopEye. I still make reference to one of my favorite lines in the movie, "I ain't man enough to be a mother." Seriously. Williams carried what would have otherwise been a completely lackluster film.
It is interesting to me that Pappy was played by Ray Walston, who like Robin Williams, first became famous for playing an alien in a TV sitcom. He was "Uncle Martin" in My Favorite Martian, which also starred Bill Bixby.
darthbilbo I don’t think that’s odd. I felt the same way. Then again, I was raised on Musicals! Being a Ginger myself, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Annie as well.
So many movies were musicals in that era tho. You had Mary Poppins, Willy Wonka, Bedknobs & Broomsticks and, for the real nerds, anyone remember The Pirate Movie?? XD
I enjoyed this film when I first watched it. I was already a huge Robin Williams fan from watching him play Mork. And I was also a huge Shelly Duvall fan from 3 Women and The Shining. I am most happy to hear that they became friends during this movie because Robin was such a nice person and Shelley had just gone through hell at the hands of Kubrick on the set of The Shining and probably needed the light and carefree movie as well as the insane comedy and good hearted nature of her co-star Robin.
One of the best movies ever! I LOVED the musical numbers, they were funny and the actors sis a fantastic job. The entire movie was silly/funny and the setting was simply perfection.
Seeing it in the theater back in the day I was absolutely enchanted by it. Loved Nilsson’s quirky music, the bizarre set, the acting and the overall pacing which really felt like the original comic series.
Here's one that was NOT in the comments Yes, it was a co-production of Disney and Paramount (Now I know why), but in the beginning of the movie, there is a 1) short animated clip of Popeye saying something to the effector "Where am I, This must be a practical joke by Bluto!" voiced by Jack Mercer (The voice of Popeye from 1935 until his death in 1984) that 2) was animated by Hanna-Barbera (I was guessing) since they were doing a new Popeye series at the time with Mercer voicing Popeye.
