By 1941, Fleischer Studio was tottering on the brink
of disaster. The failure of their second feature Mr. Bug Goes to
Town (which opened three days before the bombing of Pearl
Harbor) coupled with a bitter quarrel between Max and Dave Fleischer
and a mounting debt to Paramount led to the closure of the Miami
Studio. Executives at Parmount fired the Fleischer brothers,
installed new management, changed the studio name to Famous, moved
operations back to New York City, and cut the artists' pay. Not
surprisingly, the quality of the cartoons fell. A number of the
shorts in this collection are domestic comedies, with Popeye
babysitting the incorrigible Poopdeck Pappy or his four identical
and uninteresting nephews. It's an incongruous role for the rough
and tumble sailor, and films like "Problem Pappy" and "Me Musical
Nephews" recall the joyless cartoons that turned Betty Boop into a
hausfrau a few years earlier. Popeye, like Bugs Bunny, is a
winner, and he isn't funny as a straight man or a fall guy. These
films also lack the original vision that characterized the
Fleischers' best work. "Nix on Hypnotricks" feels like an inferior
remake of the classic Popeye-Olive-Bluto short "A Dream Walking,"
while "The Hungry Goat" borrows heavily from Tex Avery's "Tortoise
Beats Hare." The war-themed cartoons feature outrageous racial
charicatures of the Japanese that make Warner Bros.' "Bugs Bunny
Nips the Nips" look almost flattering. Unlike the Disney and Warners
characters, who made fun of the Nazis, Popeye fought the Japanese
almost exclusively. The cartoons in Popeye the Sailor, Vol.3
rank as curiosities that are more interesting to historians of
animation and American popular culture than to viewers looking for
laughs. (Unrated: suitable for ages 10 and older: violence, alcohol
and tobacco use, offensive racial stereotypes) --Charles Solomon
(1. Problem Pappy, 2. Quiet! Pleeze, 3. Olive's Sweepstakes
Ticket, 4. Flies Ain't Human, 5. Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, 6.
Olive's Boithday Presink, 7. Child Psykolojiky, 8. Pest Pilot, 9.
I'll Never Crow Again, 10. The Mighty Navy, 11. Nix on Hypnotricks,
12. Kickin' the Conga 'Round, 13. Blunder Below, 14. Fleets Of
Stren'th, 15. Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye, 16. Olive Oyl
And Water Don't Mix, 17. Many Tanks, 18. Baby Wants a Bottleship,
19. You're a Sap, Mr. Jap, 20. Alona on the Sarong Seas, 21. A Hull
of a Mess, 22. Scrap The Japs, 23. Me Musical Nephews, 24. Spinach
Fer Britain, 25. Seein' Red, White 'N' Blue, 26. Too Weak to Work,
27. A Jolly Good Furlough, 28. Ration Fer The Duration, 29. The
Hungry Goat, 30. Happy Birthdaze, 31. Wood-Peckin', 31. Cartoons
Ain't Human)
