Popeye Makes a Movie

The nephews come to the studio to watch Popeye and company make a movie. The rest of the movie is cut down from 1937's "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves".

Quite possibly this is why the opening sequence is so well done, with strong backgrounding work. When three-quarters of a cartoon is done that way, you can spend a few bucks on the minute and a half of new material. Still, you'd be much better off seeing the original one.

Popeye makes a movie with Olive Oyl and Wimpy. His nephews are watching behind the camera. The movie is Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (1937). The original is a classic and possibly the best Popeye cartoon ever. I do understand recycling it for the material but there is no need to see this one. Just watch the original.

1950's 'Popeye Makes a Movie' is the second of the three compilation cartoons to re-use footage from the three Arabian Nights Popeye cartoons (1936's 'Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor', 1937's 'Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves' and 1939's 'Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp', all high points of the Popeye theatrical series). The others being 1949's 'Popeye's Premiere', which was good, and 1952's 'Big Bad Sindbad', which was a little above average.

Of the three, 'Popeye Makes a Movie' to me is the weakest. In terms of quality, it is wildly uneven and quite disappointing and of the three it struck me as the most pointless. If it weren't for the reused footage of 'Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves' being so brilliant, that was deserving of a far better wraparound/framing story than the waste of time that was the one here, 'Popeye Makes a Movie' would have been mediocre at best and instead just scrapes average by the skin of its teeth.

'Popeye Makes a Movie' is as said saved by the clips, which are brilliant in every way and classic Popeye. The animation is vibrant, beautifully detailed and at times imaginative. The music is always merry and beautifully orchestrated, one of only two aspects to be consistently good throughout 'Popeye Makes a Movie's' duration. The other being Jack Mercer's voice work, which is full of character and his delivery really enhances the writing.

Which was great and very witty in the clips, but quite limp in the wraparound scenes. The clips are huge fun and also thrilling, very much my idea of what an adaptation or cartoon loosely based on an Arabian Nights tale should be like.

It is very sad that the same cannot be said for the wraparound scenes. The only things that work in this story are the music and the voice work. The difference in animation quality between the clips and wraparound is quite vast, nice colours but the detail isn't as rich and the drawing not as refined, very little inventive either.

The wraparound story itself just isn't that interesting, it was quite thin and excessively predictable already but made worse by the less than energised pace, the severe lack of laughs, the even more severe lack of imagination and not much really to invest in. It was just..bland. The dialogue irritates more than it amuses.

Concluding, disappointing. 5/10.

This cartoon has its moments, but most of them are the ones found in the old Fleischer Studios footage that comprises about seven minutes out of the running length, but less than half of the original cartoon. The original most of this was cribbed from is infinitely better than the framing material and the re-looped dialogue can't begin to equal the original. I find the new animation irritating at best. Watch the source cartoon instead. This is a waste of time and is just sad by the inevitable (unavoidable, really) comparison of the Fleischer Studios work to that of the later Famous Studios Paramount efforts. Others may find this worthwhile, but I certainly don't.