I'll Never Crow Again

This was not a good Popeye effort, and another one of these 1941 cartoons that don't even look like the Popeye cartoons we are used to seeing. The characters are bigger, crows are the half of the size of human beings and Popeye and Olive Oyl make odd faces that they never made before. It just doesn't look right.

The humor is almost nonexistent in this one, too. Crows are eating Olive's garden so she calls Popeye to come over and get rid of the birds. He can't do it, and Olive winds up laughing at him.

I won't into all the details but it is just not up to par for a Popeye cartoon. There is no spinach routine, either. Also, what happened to Bluto? I haven't seen him yet in a number of these 1940-41 cartoons. Where did he go? He's missed. So is Wimpy. I haven't seen him in a Popeye cartoon in over a year and I'm watching these in chronological order thanks to the recently-released Popeye The Sailor Man DVDs.

A crow harasses Olive Oyl and she calls Popeye for help. Soon, Popeye is battling a murder of crows as they ravage Olive's garden. It's a simple premise. I'm glad that the crows don't turn into racist stereotypes. It has a very weird twist ending to up-end expectations. I'm not automatically against it but it's expecting a lot from a cartoon audience. This is still a short for kids.

Like the character of Popeye very much, have said this more than once. The odd disappointing one aside, really like to love a vast majority of his cartoons. If more Fleischer's output than Famous Studios'. Fleischer's Popeye cartoons tended to be funnier, more imaginative and better made, Famous Studios' on the most part entertained though their later Popeye, and overall filmography actually, cartoons had tighter deadlines and lower budgets evident which accounted for the animation not being as good, less surprises and the material not as imaginative.

'I'll Never Crow Again' is not one of the best late Fleischer Studios cartoons and is one of the weaker cartoons of the relatively inconsistent 1941 batch. There were some good to great Popeye versus animal outings (one of the best being 'Olive's Boithday Presink' from the same year), so it is not as if Popeye cartoons that are a change from Popeye versus Bluto are bad. Far from it. Popeye also works very well with many characters other than Olive and Bluto, such as Pappy and Swee'Pea, so it's not as if any cartoon that doesn't have either of them is immediately bad. 'I'll Never Crow Again' is just not one of the good to great outings having animals as the foil and it's like a change of pace that's too different.

There are definitely good things here. Some of the animation is nice, especially the crisp shading and meticulously detailed backgrounds. The music, always important for me to talk about and Popeye cartoons always fared very well in this respect, is again lush and cleverly orchestrated and doing so well adding to and enhancing the action.

Popeye's asides and mumblings are very amusing and he as a character has great comic timing and a likeability. Jack Mercer's voice acting is spot on as usual and there are a few amusing moments later on.

However, the story is very thin and has no surprises, it also feels tired and subdued in particularly the first half. This was not the first or last Popeye versus animal cartoon in the series and it does feel like seeing a more of the same plot with not an awful lot of variation. The pacing doesn't really come to life and feels routine, even in the final quarter which could have been wackier.

Wasn't too enamoured by the crow character, who is little more than just another variation of every animal opponent that Popeye has already faced. The chemistry between them is there but it doesn't sparkle. The gags are too few and they don't ever rise above amusing. Do agree too that the character animation is a bit off here, some odd proportioning at times.

Concluding, watchable but there are far better Popeye cartoons from this period and overall. 5/10.

I'll Never Crow Again (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Middle tier Popeye short has a group of crows messing up Olive Oyl's garden so her boyfriend sets out to stop them.

I'LL NEVER CROW AGAIN is decent enough as far as a good way to kill seven-minutes but at the same time it falls well short of being one of the better films from the series. There really weren't as many laughs here as you'd normally expect and that's what kept it from being better. The highlight was a scene where Popeye is playing a scarecrow and a crow is trying to catch him looking.