Leave Well Enough Alone (1939)

Popeye the Sailor Review

Leave Well Enough Alone is a 1939 animated short from Popeye the Sailor series. It is a very interesting, but flawed entry.

This short is flawed mostly because it doesn’t have the vast majority of the series’ signature aspects including spinach and Bluto. And it is too short and relies way too heavily on that joke in its ending. And Olive is basically a non-entity here despite that one very good arm gag.

But Popeye is solid and I loved the use of animals and what it had to say about them. It may seem controversial now, but in this particular situation, the animals were definitely better off in a cage than on the streets where they were in danger of getting caught. And I just loved how that parrot explained that through a song in a very funny ending.

Leave Well Enough Alone is atypical for better and for worse, but at least it does have a solid plot and a great ending.                                         

My Rating – 4