Page 2: Disc 3 and Disc 4 Shorts, Video & Audio, Bonus Features, Menus & Packaging, Closing Thoughts |
Boop's self-titled series of shorts was chosen as the stage on which Popeye would make his animated debut in Popeye the Sailor, released on July 14, 1933. If the Popeye of print was already well-known enough to be proclaimed "a star" in his cinematic debut, the Fleischer Brothers did their part to elevate the salty hero to "superstar" status. The Fleischers' black and white Popeye cartoons were a big hit with American audiences, rivaling Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse shorts in terms of popularity. They were still going strong when creator Segar passed away in 1938. The line even continued when distributor Paramount Pictures -- who acquired ownership of Fleischer Studios in 1941 -- fired Max and Dave, dissolved their company, and formed Famous Studios to continue production. Popeye and friends got upgraded to Technicolor full-time in the mid-'40s and in both color remakes and original cartoons, they remained a staple in movie theaters until the shorts format largely bowed out of theaters in the late 1950s. Even then, the sailor kept in the public eye thanks to frequent television airings of the theatrically-released fare and a streamlined original TV series in the early 1960s.
Production values fluctuated over the course of various TV shows made by CBS in the late 1970s through the late 1980s. Robert Altman directed a major musical live-action feature for Paramount and Disney in 1980 that many remember as faring worse than it did. Popeye found new life as: a video game hero; a spokesman for fried chicken, orange juice, oatmeal, coastal awareness, and (naturally) spinach; a commemorative stamp. Meanwhile, rights to Popeye's cartoons changed hands a number of times. Several of the sailor's animated shorts fell into public domain, which enabled a variety of small independent studios to distribute low-budget videocassettes and later DVDs. However, an official, definitive home video release of classic Popeye films remained in limbo, as the parties with a claim to ownership -- Associated Artists Productions, MGM/United Artists, Turner Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, King Features and its parent Hearst Syndicate -- were either unwilling or unable to overcome a standstill.
Last summer, Warner Home Video announced that the essential parties (Warner, via its merger with Turner, plus King and Hearst) had come together, reached an agreement, and decided that the time had arrived for Popeye's entire cartoon library to be treated to DVD. And so, on July 31, 2007, Warner released the subject of this review -- Popeye the Sailor: Volume One, 1933-1938 -- a 4-disc, 60-cartoon set presenting the hero's canon in complete, chronological fashion with lots of bonus features to boot. As the DVD's title indicates, this is merely the beginning. The slugging sailor's enduring career in cartoons amassed a great amount of content. Warner's official count claims the studio has 231 theatrically-released Paramount shorts and 407 television shorts to make available in the years ahead.
Volume One delivers the first five years of Popeye's career on film, consisting of 58 one-reel black and white shorts and 2 two-reel Technicolor shorts, all produced by the Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Many consider Popeye's earliest shorts his most triumphant, and their historic and cultural importance as animation and plain Americana is impossible to dispute.
It doesn't take long to figure out and warm to the universal order of Fleischers' Popeye cartoons. The titular protagonist makes his marks both verbally and physically. As far as his speech is concerned, he has an unusual way of pronouncing words (which carries into such phonetically-titled shorts as Be Kind to 'Aminals', Hospitaliky, and Protek the Weakerist). He also has a froggy voice and a flair for muttering under his breath (many of his funniest comments come with his mouth still and asides flowing). The vegetable-sparked power comes in handy for the hand-to-hand battles that are often born out of the rivalry between Popeye and the much larger Bluto. In the cartoon tradition, their fighting can be deemed fairly harmless, though there's a lot of it and much of it implies great amounts of pain. The source behind Popeye and Bluto's rivalry is often their common love interest, Olive Oyl. Even when they're not vying for her, their competitive natures manage to bring out interminable one-upmanship.
Olive Oyl, of course, is the temperamental beanpole who is curiously desired by both Popeye and Bluto. No damsel in distress, Olive can defend herself well and she's definitely not excluded from the tame violence and broad physical gags. Her womanly status distinguishes her from the central cast and her maternal instincts figure into a few shorts. Olive is somewhat of a surrogate mother to Swee'Pea, a foundling who appears in three Volume One cartoons as an innocent, danger-causing foil to Popeye. Rounding out the regulars is the hamburger-addicted loafer Wimpy, who feels like a great, unique character even in the limited exposure he receives compared to Segar's comic strip.
As in any long-lived cartoon series, some amount of formula emerges in the Fleischers' Popeye shorts, most noticeably in Popeye and Bluto's back-and-forth rivalry that plays out in a variety of different settings until spinach serves as the all-purpose solution. This format actually takes a while to show up, as the earliest shorts managed to provide some diversity. When it does arrive in the later episodes of 1934, it does a little to lessen the series' appeal and any of the individual shorts' value. Gladly, though this scenario is the one most commonly employed, the series manages to go beyond it.
In the middle of Volume 1, the series becomes more musical in nature, occasionally adopting a lightly operatic tone or otherwise just prominently featuring a song besides Popeye's familiar "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man" anthem. Then the series soon changes again, opting for more comedy and action as the Fleischers approached the later parts of the '30s. The pair of feature-foreshadowing two-reel Technicolor shorts further depart from convention by casting Bluto in roles from One Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights across from Popeye himself.
Whether it's merely a timeless setup that can be translated into most superhero tales or the Fleischers were inspired by the success of Walt Disney's studio, the characters of the Popeye cartoons clearly align with Mickey Mouse's universe, with Popeye and Bluto serving as Mickey and Pete's mismatched foes, and Olive supplying the lone targeted female. Despite this parallel structure, the respective cartoon series are quite different in execution despite the inevitable 1930s sensibilities they shared in their busy heydays.
Some traits that have kept the Fleischers' Popeye cartoons entertaining some seventy-odd years later are their fine sense of humor, be in it funny expressions spoken (many butchered) or in the punny verbal gags of text signs. On a stylistic level, the animation retains charm for its impressive, cutting-edge techniques, such as the three-dimensionality that is found in certain shots.
Disney's features were what emerged as the most viewed, discussed, and celebrated of early-to-mid 20th century animation and the non-graphically-inclined maestro behind them as the field's unparalleled revolutionary. But to recognize the Fleischers merely as Walt's contemporaries and competitors underestimates their contributions to animation. For instance, years before the oft-cited Steamboat Willie, synchronized sound was achieved in the Fleischers' Sound Car-Tunes that introduced the still-popular sing-along-enabling "bouncing ball." Had the Fleischers' features Gulliver's Travels and Mr. Bug Goes to Town not floundered in comparison to Disney's triumphs, In watching these cartoons over the past month, one thing was evident: the shorts seemed better and less repetitive once viewing was spread out. That's certainly true of most episodic fare, especially that with some age to it (and Popeye has plenty of that). So, while the chronological compilation method makes sense for the customer, the collector, and the wallets of each, the shorts are so much easier to appreciate when consumed in moderation rather than, say, blazing through an entire disc in a single sitting.
Succinct synopses of the 60 featured shorts follow, with release year and runtime appearing in the parentheses after the titles.
Disc 1
Popeye the Sailor (1933) (7:33)
I Yam What I Yam (1933) (6:03)
Blow Me Down! (1933) (6:17)
I Eats My Spinach (1933) (6:52)
Seasin's Greetinks! (1933) (5:55)
Shiver Me Timbers! (1934) (6:40)
Axe Me Another (1934) (7:00)
A Dream Walking (1934) (7:33)
Choose Yer 'Weppins' (1935) (6:09)
For Better or Worser (1935) (7:45)
Dizzy Divers (1935) (7:40)
The Spinach Overture (1935) (8:02)
Vim, Vigor and Vitaliky (1936) (6:36)
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