With his cranky and cantankerous demeanour, Popeye, the one-eyed, pipe-smoking sailor with tattooed and disproportionately big forearms, will have you in stitches of laughter throughout this collection of short films! Whether playing Aladdin, tracking Ali Baba or facing off with Sindbad, this unsuspecting character keeps finding himself wrapped up in surprising imbroglios where he has to stand up to a fearsome rival or daunting danger. And for viewers the result is always lots of laughter, because whenever he finds himself in a position of weakness, he always finds a miraculous can of spinach to turn things very much in his favour! That’s one of the most lovable things about the Fleischer brothers’ Popeye series, which revolves around gags and table-turning twists. Popeye’s distinctive grouching and Olive Oyl’s nasal voice add to the humour of the films. Exaggeration, typical of cartoon aesthetics, is another recurring feature of this collection, as the characters' over-the-top expressiveness and spectacular transformations (which are reminiscent of Tex Avery's world, particularly his character Wolfie) are accompanied by music that underscores comedic aspect of situations involving falls, blows and more.
What's more, the portrayal of the world in the Fleischer brothers' Popeye is wonderfully quirky! Everything is alive and can transform at any moment: a radio talks and gives directions, Olive’s disproportionate body turns into a camel … Another key to the ingenuity and strength of these films is the way the stories mesh with One Thousand and One Nights while including references to the modern world, such as when Popeye rubs the spinach can as if it were a magic lamp. In such a world, Aladdin’s lamp can be replaced by a standard flashlight! And there are escalators for getting out of a cave, traffic lights in the middle of the desert and a slew of other incongruous inventions that will bring smiles to viewers’ faces. Seemingly very inspired by the modernisation of their society, Fleischer Studios even integrates mechanisation into their universe: Popeye’s muscles are sometimes represented as gears, and characters have to refuel just as vehicles do. Max Fleischer was an inventor and this is reflected in the nature and quality of the aesthetics: in Popeye the Sailor meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves and Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor, the backgrounds are particularly realistic thanks to an avant-garde technique using three dimensions.
Lastly, by alluding to Technicolor and chronicling the production of a film within their own film (thanks to Olive becoming a scriptwriter), the pair of brothers tip their hats to the art to which they were devoted.
These three episodes of Popeye showcase the legendary work of Fleischer Studios and are among Benshi’s "indestructible" attractions – and they're sure to delight viewers of all ages!
