Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp

So in this fun, longer than usual Popeye cartoon it's strangely Olive herself who dreams the whole thing up while trying to write a movie script for the studio she works at, which is probably why it has Popeye as Aladdin and herself as the princess, and she even calls him Popeye at one point and then corrects herself, in an early example of breaking the fourth wall that is pretty neat. The look of the version I watched was very faded and bleached of a lot of the colour, but I still couldn't miss the richness of the details in some of the scenes, especially the moonlit palace with the full moon behind it, very dramatic and beautifully done. As always in just about any animation he ever lent his quirky voice talents to, big props to Jack Mercy and his wonderfully odd pun-filled mutterings that keep things moving along and provide some of the biggest laughs. I just love the gross evil vizier who Popeye has to eat multiple cans of spinach before he can beat, his manic leering expressions and villainous theatrics are so funny and of the certain style that could only ever have come out of the Fleicher studios! I didn't like the overly camp genie though, he was an obnoxious bad stereotype, but it was still cool how Popeye was having a blue genie doing goofy hijinks over fifty years before we had Robin Williams delivering his classic performance! There is quite a few unmistakeable precursors to the Disney movie in this.. For me this isn't quite a gem like the Sinbad Popeye special was but it's fun and entertaining enough nonetheless, well worth checking out! X

Many of Dave Fleischer and Fleischer Studios' cartoons were good to classic. The best of them were fun and charming and even if there were cartoons of theirs that veered on the cute and some cartoons had more interesting characters than others they were always outstandingly scored, very easy to like and extremely well made, some of the techniques used even were innovative for back then.

'Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp' is the longest Popeye cartoon, more a short film somewhat, and for me and many others it's one of his best, classic Popeye if you will and contains everything so great about his best cartoons. Of the three Arabian Nights Popeye cartoons, 'Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp' is my personal favourite though all three are more than well worth watching. Did not mind the absence of Bluto at all and didn't actually miss him all that much, it is always good to have changes of paces in the Popeye cartoons and most of those in question do that well, of which 'Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp' is one of the best examples.

Olive Oyl is not quite as interesting as Popeye and the villain and Mae Questel's voice fits the character a little more than that of Margie Hines. But really there is very little to criticise.

Popeye is as amusing and likeable as ever, the genie is lots of fun and the villain is just as entertaining and also a good enough threat without being too over-the-top. Jack Mercer does a great job as always as Popeye and relishes Popeye's mumbling and asides.

As ever, the music is lush and characterful, synchronising beautifully with the action. The story is not too formulaic and filled with energy and charm, as well as the customary magic. The best assets though are the animation and dialogue. The animation is meticulously detailed, vibrant and sees a lot of smoothness in design and with some imaginative visual flourishes. The dialogue is fresh and one can tell that the writers were having a great time writing the dialogue here, mumblings have seldom been more hilarious than here.

In summary, really great. 9/10 Bethany Cox

A POPEYE Cartoon.

Surprise Pictures scriptwriter Olive Oyl dreams-up a film version of ALADDIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP, starring her spinach-munching boyfriend & herself.

This was the third in a series of 3 excellent two-reel cartoons, created by Max Fleischer, in which Popeye & his friends are interpolated into the classic stories of The Arabian Nights. They feature great animation and taut, fast-moving plots. Meant to be shown in movie theaters, they are miles ahead of their Saturday Morning counterparts. Jack Mercer is the voice of Popeye; Mae Questel does the honors for Olive Oyl.

This, the last of the three Fleisher Studios 'Popeye' colour 'features', opens with Olive Oyl writing a script for an Aladdin film starring herself as the princess and Popeye as Aladdin. This meta-reference morphs into a stereotypical 'Arabian Nights' town with Aladdin working in his "Junke Shoppe" when the lovely princess, with whom the humble shoppe-keeper is in love, passes by in a sumptuous litter. Also watching is her villainous vizier who plans to steal the kingdom (never trust a vizier!). The evil one tricks Aladdin into retrieving a magic lamp but his scheme backfires and Aladdin ends up with the thaumaturgic treasure. The genie-of-the-lamp makes Aladdin into a prince so he can court the princess, who instantly falls in love with him. As they are about to wed, the cunning vizier tricks one of the ladies-in-waiting into giving him the lamp, kidnaps the princess (castle and all), and becomes so powerful that Aladdin need to ingest three (3) cans of spinach (!) to save the day. The film is full of meta-humour and the fourth wall is broken a couple of times. Unlike the other two previous Arabesque Popeye features (Sindbad (1936) and Forty Thieves (1938)), Popeye and Olive don't play themselves (other than in the prologue), the villain is not a costumed-Bluto, J. Wellington Wimpy is absent, and the film doesn't use the Fleischer Studios Tabletop 3D background technique; otherwise, the story is typical Popeye shtick, and is pretty funny at times, especially the genie (some of the gags are similar to those in Bugs Bunny's hilarious "A Lad in his Lamp" (1948)). The Arab stereotypes may offend some modern-day sensitivities, but other than that the film is an entertaining outing for the iconic spinach-eating hero and a good example of the high-quality 'classic' animation that was done in the 1930's.

The last of the triple-length Technicolor Popeye featurettes, this one is a retelling of the story of Aladdin, written by Olive Oyl as a screenplay for Surprise Pictures. "Aladdin" has less accomplished animation than the other two featurettes, but it features a better-moving and more balanced storyline. Popeye's best ad-lib, while being pressured into romance by a love-struck Princess (played by Olive): "I never made love in Technicolor before!"