Popeye

Despite the evidently affectionate reproductions, as it were, by Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall as Popeye and his girl, Olive Oyl, and some loyal support, I don't think this comes off at all; but then, I have no fond memory of the originals.

Popeye may be uneven and at times wilful, like many Altman films. But it is still very much the enjoyable fable it should be.

One succumbs to a state of glazed indifference. The fault is not in the performances by Williams and Duvall, but rather, I suspect, in Altman's refusal to allow any movie star to violate the one-dimensional texture he's created.

Being immersed for nearly two hours in the claustrophobic comic strip world of Popeye is like being trapped in a stalled elevator or a doomed submarine with raving lunatics without fresh air.

A flawed extravagance, but if you can survive its stumbling pace, its mumbling actors and its dreadful songs, you will eventually experience a charming, unique fantasy world quite unlike anything you've seen before.

When they return to the plot, it all gets laborious, and leaves adult audiences to explain it away as a children's film; though children, equally, are as likely to disown it.

Altman's naturalism and the unreal subject matter that makes Popeye so interesting and unusual... a genuinely original atmosphere.

Nobody could actively dislike Popeye, but that's scarcely the kind of apology anyone should be making for an Altman film.

[I]t turned out to be one of the most wonderfully bizarre family films of its time and holds up beautifully today.

Those who can get on its wavelength will appreciate its eccentricities; those who cannot will find its whimsy the equivalent of waterboarding.