Casi Casados

Two timing Olive Oyl has to decide who to marry. Popeye or Bluto.

She chooses Popeye with eenie, meanie, minie, moe. They decide to marry at 3pm on the afternoon that day.

Bluto tells Popeye that the best man won and then goes on to sabotage the wedding.

This is a world that if Bluto can stop Popeye to get to the church on time. Then maybe Olive would choose him.

Popeye decides it is not spinach he needs to best Bluto. It is to show Bluto what kind of commitment is needed to marry Olive Oyl.

It is another cartoon where you think a heel like Bluto and Olive are made for each other.

Olive Oyl continues to amaze me. I never remembered her as fickle as I now find her, watching these cartoons decades after first seeing them. Why Popeye and Bluto put up with her, or even find her worth fighting over all the time, we'll never know. In this cartoon, Popeye is proposing to his longtime girlfriend. She accepts but Bluto enters the house right then and he wants to marry her, too. She does the right thing: she goes "eeenie, meanie, minie, moe (with her nose). Wow, what commitment!

Her nose points to Popeye and she tells him to come back at 3 o'clock and she'll be dressed and ready to be married. Bluto shakes hands and pretends to be a good loser, but you know he has something up his sleeve!

Bluto, through open windows in Popeye's house, sabotages our boy at every turn, from when Popeye is taking a bath (which Bluto converts to cement) to when the sailor man is trying to get into his tuxedo.

The ending is surprise, different from most Popeye cartoons.....and very clever.

Nearlyweds (1956)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Both Popeye and Bluto propose to Olive Oyl but she decides to go with the sailor. Bluto accepts that he has been rejected and wishes the happy couple nothing but the best but it doesn't take long for him to try and take Popeye out of the picture.

NEARLYWEDS has a plot that had been seen in several earlier Popeye shorts so the originality factor is missing here and sadly there aren't enough laughs to keep the short running at a smooth pace. I think the highlight of the movie is seeing Popeye flip out and then back into his clothes. Outside of this there are a couple minor fights that will put a smile on your face but there's just not enough here to keep you entertained throughout.

Olive Oyl consents to marry Popeye if he can show up to her home by 3PM. Bluto, of course, proceeds to do whatever he can to prevent that happening.

The Famous Studios Popeyes approach their end, without Technicolor, without the Famous Studios logo, but still with Popeye and Bluto fighting over Olive Oyl. The background designs continue to grow simpler and simpler under the vanishing budgets, and the Polarcolor Process used is wan. The Famous Studios staff pulls off a couple of good gags, like the way Popeye disrobes before getting into his bath without violating the Production Code -- although I have my doubts about the implications of how he breaks out of the concrete -- but the series is far from its best days in the 1930s.

Olive accepts Popeye's marriage proposal. Bluto is the odd man out and sets about destroying any chance Popeye had. There is nothing new here, other than the fact that instead of pursuing the skinny wench, she has accepted. Some pretty clever physical stuff and a rather sexist ending.