Popeye para Presidente

Popeye and Bluto are running for the same office. Everyone has voted save Olive Oyl, and her vote will decide the election. So they head over to her farm and compete by doing chores.

While I can forgive the folks at Famous Studios their failure to explain the Electoral College in six minutes, I find it harder to ignore the utterly hackneyed way in which they present this cartoon. Popeye and Bluto fight. Bluto cheats. Finally Bluto clouts Popeye and leaves him in a situation from which he cannot escape, but there's some spinach to hand, which he eats, escapes, and clobbers Bluto. Just like all the other times.

Lots of punches with attacks and counterattacks. The vote for president is tied and who should have the deciding vote but our dear Olive Oyl. So Popeye and Opponent, Bluto, duke it out. They each try to impress the farm woman with their abilities to cut wood, plow a field, and store hay. Olive is using them to do the work she usually does. Fortunately for Popeye, Olive has a spinach field. Some of the bits are clever and work quite well. Perhaps one of the better in the series. Of course, since it's 1956, the picture quality is quite good, and the color, like most of these late features, enhances the events.

The Popeye/Paramount cartoons were winding down--1957's CRYSTAL BRAWL being the last one. And like The Three Stooges;half of them were using stock footage.

So this is one of the better ones---the Popeye/Bluto rivalry taken t he highest stakes of all--The White House. Hey,this looks downright ssane compared to the state of USA politics today and the Trumpchimpanzees ruining America bit by bit. Well,at least we kept a boor from The White House for a 60-year reprieve.

Really like to love a good deal of Popeye cartoons and like the character of Popeye. Love Bluto more and his chemistry with Popeye has always driven their cartoons. Will admit though to preferring the Popeye cartoons from the Dave Fleischer era, the cartoons tend to be funnier and there is more originality and more risk taking in some of them.

'Popeye for President' is another late Popeye cartoon and made in Famous Studios' roughest and most variable period where budgets were much smaller in particularly the animation and deadlines and time constraints were shorter and tighter. All things considered, while there are infinitely better Popeye cartoons (especially during the Fleischer era) and there are signs of what made this period an inferior one for Famous Studios, 'Popeye for President' is not a bad late Popeye cartoon at all, actually really very enjoyable and one of the better cartoons in Famous Studios' late output.

As to be expected, the story is standard and formulaic, all it is basically is Popeye and Bluto battling for Olive Oyl's affections although it isn't repetitive and there is a little more variety with the presidential theme.

Much of the animation is fine for late 50s Famous Studios, but there are parts where the backgrounds are sparse and the drawing lacks finesse.

What is fantastic about 'Popeye for President' is the music score, the best thing for me. It's beautifully orchestrated, rhythmically it's full of energy and there is so much character and atmosphere, it's also brilliant at adding to the action and enhancing it. The animation is also on the most par surprisingly good for late Famous Studios, colourful, nicely detailed and fluid. The gags are very amusing to hilarious for late Famous Studios/Popeye, the interplay between the characters is lively and witty if in need of more variety at times and the pace is never dull.

The three main characters do a great job carrying the cartoon, Bluto being the funniest and most interesting. Olive Oyl is a good charming character where you can totally see what Popeye sees in her, but it's the entertaining interplay between Popeye and Bluto that really sparkles. Jack Mercer, Mae Questel and Jackson Beck give great vocal characterisations, Beck in particular and Mercer and Questel are the voice actors that spring to mind generally for me for Popeye and Olive's voices.

Concluding, very enjoyable. 8/10 Bethany Cox

For so many reasons, a more actual short animation today than in 1956. Because the political frame becomes , in our society, the most important part. The victory of Spinach Party versus Blutocratic Party remains the axis of contemporary elections and the vote of Olive Oyl remains the best part.