Popeye the Sailor (1933)

Popeye the Sailor Review

Popeye the Sailor is a 1933 animated short film from the Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor series. It is an important short.

Technically, this film is included in the Betty Boop series of shorts, but it was the debut of Popeye and the very beginning of his own series of adventures. It was, thus, a highly important short that brought this character from the comics to the big screen for the first time. While crucial and containing many of his signature elements, it was still far from a great debut.

The overall story is slim and Bluto is nowhere near as memorable here as he would be in later shorts. The same goes for Olive. Popeye fared better and his iconic song is first introduced here. It was terrific and so much fun. The animation is also solid as is the score. As for Betty Boop’s sequence, it is pretty much a scene entirely lifted from her previous short ‘Betty’s Bamboo Isle’, so this should only be considered a Betty Boop short by technicality.

Popeye the Sailor is an overall solid debut of Popeye that started off his series on an uneven note.

My Rating – 3.5