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Robin Williams's first starring role kinda fell flat in 1980 for a number of reasons. Fist, the Thimble theater cartoon by Segar went through several changes but had been pushed out of the mainstream viewing by such more cerebral cartoons like Peanuts, Doonesbury, Bloom County and then 5 years later, Calvin and Hobbes. As late as the 60s, these Popeye cartoons were seen only on kiddie shows and as such, were long out of the public view. Hence, the appeal of the strip was restricted to old duffers like me who grew up with Popeye in the 40s and 50s.

Too bad, because this film reflects the talents of Altman and Feiffer, maintains a level of tristesse and timelessness that hearkens back to the old Segar cartoon strip. My only criticism of the acting was Robin Williams's difficulty in getting Popeye's squint done which Ray Walston did so beautifully.

Myth is good and in the wake of Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, we've seen a number of sequels, prequels-- none of which measured up to the original. Then we have the Irish fantasies based loosely on folklore surrounding the Celtic notion of the Se, many of which are terrible, stereotyped or used as a boilerplate for a knock-off horror or ghost film. What we have here in this film is a hybrid that meets neither of the generic criteria and takes itself too seriously. The story line goes from confusion to chaos as contradictions and non sequitur occur, ending up in a jumbled up mess that never resolves any of the conflicts. Make matters worse, the exorcist is not even an ordained priest but a shaman who craves to be a rock star with two teenybopper sprites as sidekicks.

If you want decent fantasy, check out Robocop, Peter Weller in Buckaroo Banzai who is not only a scientist, CIA operative but a rock star as well.

As an anthropologist educated and trained here in the US, I grew up on Malinowski's ethnographies. Indeed, I can boast that I have nearly every one of his great works on the shelves overlooking my desk as I write this. So, I was more than slightly interested in this film.

As a documentary, it takes a personal approach because the film maker is Bronislaw Malinowski's great-grandson. From the get-go, it's a no holds barred exposure of this great scholar showing all the moles and warts of a complex man. I'm old enough (80) to have talked to several of his students and had garnered a great deal of insight before reading his biography and his published diary. All of it squares with what I'd learned beforehand.

As a scholar and field investigator, he was brilliant, insightful and innovative. As a person, he was as human as you or I. The documentary goes to great lengths to make that point of the seeming paradox of his life and research. The disparaging remarks about his subjects of study in his diary seem to militate against his presentation of them as people in his ethnography. That's not at odds with reality. All of us who have done field work in miserable places under trying conditions, far from the comforts of home and our loved ones have harbored those feelings.

Good scholarship is often the product of a good mind and nasty comments made to oneself is likewise frequently the result of being human.