Popeye

Popeye (1980) is Robert Altman's musical comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The grumbling, pipe-chewing sailor with the impossible forearms rows into the ramshackle seaside town of Sweethaven hunting for his long-lost father, and walks straight into its squabbles.

Robin Williams, in his first leading role, plays Popeye as a mumbling tornado who wrecks everything he touches, while gangly Shelley Duvall seems to have stepped right out of the newspaper strip as Olive Oyl. The snag: Olive is already promised to the hulking Bluto, and the whole town is being squeezed for taxes by an unseen Commodore. Spinach, of course, is the one thing Popeye can't stand, until he has to.

Altman didn't make a tidy Disney sing-along; he built his usual sprawling, overlapping circus instead. The Sweethaven set was constructed on Malta, Harry Nilsson wrote the songs, and the dialogue keeps stepping on itself. It's a strange, lopsided, oddly lovable film that has split audiences for decades, which is half the fun of it. Stream Popeye (1980) online on iFILM.