We Aim to Please

Popeye and Olive Oyl open a restaurant. Unfortunately, their first customer is Bluto, who eats a bunch of food and then stiffs them on the bill. This leads to the usual fisticuffs with Popeye getting pummeled until you know what. Not too much suspense here.

Popeye and Olive Oyl open a diner. Their first customer is Wimpy, who bums a hamburger and leaves, promising, as always, to pay on Tuesday. This encourages Bluto also order and try to stiff the proprietors. As usual, a fight ensues.

There are no bad Popeye cartoons in this period, when the Fleischers and their staff were figuring out what they could do with the character, as long as they obeyed Dave Fleischer's rule to put as many gags into a cartoon as possible. That's what goes on here. There are big gags, like how Popeye changes the location of the diner, and there are medium gags, like how Olive makes sandwiches, and tiny gags like the menu.

Olive Oyl and Popeye start up a diner. They do a song and dance. Olive suggests moving to the busier corner and Popeye gives their diner a push. Wimpy and Bluto are a couple of bums. They eat but they don't pay. Popeye fights it out with Bluto.

It's a standard Popeye cartoon although they are not sailors. It's got all the Popeye moves. I wouldn't mind for some more imaginative scamming especially from Wimpy. He still doesn't have his catch phrase. It does have the standard Popeye Bluto fight. It should have been a food fight where Wimpy can grab his share. That's the regular move with that story.

This starts out like a Betty Boop cartoon, meaning with a song. Popeye and Olive have opened a diner and they are seen outside of it on opening day, singing and dancing "We Aim To Please."

After that, we see Wimpy and Bluto standing on the other side of the street, observing. "Watch me obtain a hamburger without the necessary fee," says Wimpy. He goes inside and says, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." That line went on to be used by him for the next 30 years. It became his trademark, along with the hamburger-eating, of course.

There's not much of a story to this, but it was very entertaining. We only see two customers, but they are Customers From Hell, mainly Bluto. Wimpy won't pay, of course, but Bluto's aim is to demolish the place! He does everything he can to disrupt the the diner and act like some moronic vandal, just for the sake of being a no-good you-know-what.

If you have this cartoon on DVD, freeze-frame she shot where Popeye shows the menu and read it - it's pretty corny and funny.

Make no mistake-although officially Popeye's cartoon, one J. Wellington Wimpy is the star here. Wimpy is (or should be) the icon for the American approach to consumerism-"I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." Wimpy never worries about that far off Tuesday, when his hamburgers will come home to roost (no doubt with indigestion not far behind), he just wants his hamburger today and hang Tuesday. Wimpy reminds me a lot of W. C. Fields' persona-he too was always concerned with current results, regardless of future consequences. Both also have just a touch of larceny in their heart. Wimpy is my favorite character in the series and his appearances were always too brief and too rare for my taste. Much better sidekick than the rather annoying Shorty ever was or could be. Here's to you, Wimpy, wherever you are. May all your days be Wednesdays. Well worth seeking out. Most Recommended.