Taxi-Turvy

Not the most impressive Popeye serie part but just nice. The old rivalry Popeye versus Bluto and Olive as price of victory and collateral victim of the pride of the men. Nice - the old man, the firs client of the taxi drivers.

Popeye and Bluto are rival taxi drivers. It's a battle for every fare. All's fair in taxi and war. Bluto picks up Olive Oyl and it's on. There are no holds barred.

It's another Popeye cartoon where the boys are working a different career. This one has them driving taxis. It's fine. It's nothing special. It is basically what most Popeye cartoons do except the taxi part. It's the classic Popeye trio doing the classic Popeye-Bluto battle over Olive. I do wish that they would be more imaginative with the taxi idea. They could at least put in more cars although that may cost more money. These are done on the cheap.

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.

'Taxi-Turvey' is a 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, 'Taxi-Turvey' is not a bad late Popeye cartoon at all 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 with not as much variety as many other Popeye cartoons. There could have been more gags too, the ones here are amusing and timed reasonably well, but they are never hilarious and it's not laugh-a-minute, occasionally also on the repetitive side.

Similarly the animation quality is uneven, never terrible but never fantastic. The colours are fine and there is smoothness and nice detail on the most part but there are some moments where the backgrounds are sparse and the drawing rough.

What is fantastic about 'Taxi-Turvey' 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 gags are executed well, the interplay between the characters is lively and witty if in need of more variety 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, decent if nothing mind-blowing. 7/10 Bethany Cox

In this one, Popeye and Bluto are taxi drivers, competing for fares, and for the fair Olive Oyl.

Some of the gags are classic silent film ones, seen in Harry Langdon shorts, but offered in a much more violent fashion. Of course, the essence of silent comedy was that no one was ever actually injured; so if Olive winds up suspended between two cabs until she strikes a traffic cop, it's funny rather than tragic.

Of course, it all ends with Popeye being overwhelmed by Bluto's dirty tricks and eating some spinach. That repetitive plot is what makes the Popeye cartoons dull to me. Still, the gags are well executed.

Popeye and Bluto are rival taxi drivers. Popeye is driving the 1930s-looking boxy vehicle while Bluto has sleek limo-type taxi. In their first contest over a customer, Bluto ruins Popeye's cab and steals the customer. Our sailor man hero has to use his pipe as a blowtorch to weld the cab back together.

The next customer is Olive Oyl. How Popeye and Bluto snatch that "fare" away from each, while driving down city streets, is very creative and very funny.

The ending was "cute," too, especially after it looked like Popeye was doomed for sure, when Bluto took his spinach saying, "There will be no spinach in this picture!"

Also, the colors in this animated short were spectacular. They really did a nice job of this in restored and remastered from 35mm "75th Anniversary Collector's Edition of Popeye The Sailor Man."