Adventures of Popeye

Adventures of Popeye (1935)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Live action mixes in with the animation here as a young boy is getting picked on by a bully so Popeye teaches him how to handle these situations. For the most part we see clips from earlier Popeye films but they use some of the better clips from the series, which leads to plenty of laughs. The live action stuff is pretty good as well and it mixes very well with the animation. We see earlier clips of Popeye battling Bluto, a wild bull and a giant snake among other things.

On DVD from Warner.

In this early cheater cartoon, a kid is made mock of for reading a Popeye comic book. Popeye animates from the cover of the magazine and shows clips from some of his earlier cartoons.

Comic books began as reprints of comic strips, like Elzie Segar's THIMBLE THEATER, in which Popeye appeared. It was about the time that this cartoon came out that original comic books began to appear, and many of them were based on characters that appeared in movie cartoons.

Most of the original work in this one consists of the Popster saying, effectively "Do you remember this one" and leaping into the cartoon frame. It was certainly cheaper than animating a seven-minute cartoon.

I watched on TCM this morning. It starts in live-action when a little boy buys the book with the title of this cartoon. He then gets confronted by a bigger boy and the smaller one then feels defeated. Then Popeye on the cover of his book then comes to life and tells the little boy how he often defeated his enemies, usually Bluto, courtesy of scenes of four of his cartoons. If you're very familiar with how Popeye comes through, I don't have to tell you how the little boy defeats his bully, that's for sure! So on that point, I say Adventures of Popeye is worth a look.

A little boy, minding his own business, has just purchased a book about Popeye. As he is walking along, a bully, twice his size, assaults him. Popeye, who is in the book, sees this and shows the boy a series of vignettes from some of his movies. I'm sure this was a cheap way to put out an animated film. He finds himself in several settings. First he is in a bull ring and turns a gigantic bull into various cuts of meat. Secondly, he is in the jungle with Olive and confronts all these wild animals. Again, he violently dispatches each of them in a creative way. In another he is fighting Bluto on a log on a river. There is a pretty funny high chair bit. Average Popeye stuff.

People will point out that this was the first of the Popeye "cheaters"--that is, it consists mainly of footage from earlier cartoons.

However, the clips from the four cartoons here have all been re-dubbed with Jack Mercer, Mae Questel and Gus Wickie doing the voices that had earlier been done by others.

Also, in a Popeye "cheater" they often came up with verbal gags that weren't in the original. (In "Customers Wanted" a clip is shown from the earlier "Let's Get Moving" in which Popeye tosses Olive's piano out of the window while he delivers a great under-the-breath mumbling: "The first movement from Not Paying the Rent"--a gag not found in the original cartoon.)

So, it's important to bear that in mind before referring to these as "cheaters".