Nurse to Meet Ya

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. They also generally look a good deal better and don't look hindered by budget like the late Popeyes were.

'Nurse to Meet Ya is a relatively 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 occasional signs of what made this period an inferior one for Famous Studios, 'Nurse to Meet Ya' is not a bad late Popeye cartoon at all, a long way from it, and one of the better cartoons in Famous Studios' relatively late output.

As to be expected, the story is standard and formulaic and there could have a little more variety in the ways Popeye and Bluto fought over stopping the baby from crying. Olive has very little to do, which was not unusual sadly for this stage of the series.

While much of the animation is fine, it does at times have some done in a rush-like drawing.

On the other, as said, much of it is very vibrantly colourful and the backgrounds are meticulously detailed and colourful. What is fantastic here is the music score, the consistent best thing of the mid-late-50s Popeye cartoons regardless of what the rest of the cartoons were like. 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 gags are executed well, although the snake charmer gag was already a very old one well before 'Nurse to Meet Ya' but seeing Bluto as a snake charmer was fun. Popeye's impressions though were where the cartoon was at its funniest though.

Popeye and Bluto carry 'Nurse to Meet Ya' beautifully individually, especially Popeye here, and their chemistry and tension is a lot of fun. 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.

In summary, worth a look. 7/10.

Olive Oyl is a nurse in charge of a baby. She is sitting on a park bench when Bluto and Popeye come by. Of course, the two of them fall head over heels when they see her. They launch attacks on each other resulting in the baby starting to cry. Now it is time for the heavy artillery as they try to get the child to stop crying and thereby get Olive on their side. There is little original in this one, same old formula with spinach at the conclusion. These fifties efforts were more polished and the film more colorful. But the Fleischer stuff that predated them had more variety and were not so slick.

Popeye and Bluto see Olive Oyl in the park. She's wearing a maid's outfit and has a baby in a carriage, so they start fighting, of course, because this is a standard Popeye cartoon.

Strong points: Good color work, and the usual nice gags from the Famous Studios team. Weak points: the character designs continue to simplify in the era of shrinking budgets, and the story line is the same as 80% of the Popeye cartoons. This was something that confounded me as a child, more than half a century ago, but nowadays I recognize it as tiredness on the part of the staff, some of whom had been working for the Fleischers since the 1920s.

Popeye and Bluto are riding a tandem bicycle through the park. Well, Popeye is the one doing the work. Bluto is just chilling. They spot Olive Oyl sitting at a bench as a nanny to a baby. The boys are immediately taken and the competition begins. They wake up the baby and try to stop the crying. This is the Famous Studios era and the animation is not the best. The park feels really empty with no background characters. I can't accept Popeye being a dog. I don't like him turning into a dog. It's the standard Popeye trio cartoon. It's not the most imaginative, but the standard issue always works.