Let's You and Him Fight

Bluto is the boxing champ. Popeye The Sailor is the challenger. The crowd is large at Yank'em Stadium. Olive Oyl is desperate to stop Popeye from fighting and she walks out on him. Wimpy is eating his hamburgers and keeping time. The fight goes badly for Popeye. At home, Olive is listening to the fight and grabs a can of spinach.

It's the second year of the cartoon. The drawings are still somewhat primitive. Bluto is looking rough. Olive Oyl's voice is still wrong. Nevertheless, this is a classic Popeye story with all the early main characters. You can't ask for more than that. It is what it is.

It's Bluto, "the champ," verses Popeye, "the sailor man," in the "fight of the century."

I think this theme - a big boxing match between these two guys - was used in a couple of other Popeye cartoons down the road, but I enjoyed this one the best. Boxing was a subject used in a lot of feature films in the 1930s and '40s. In the '30s, three sports ruled in the United States: baseball, horse racing and boxing.

Anyway, this cartoon has the insane sight gags of the '30s I enjoy where inanimate objects are anything but that, such as microphones turning into mouths and correcting each other's grammar! How about Bluto working out on a 1,000-pound iron punching bag, which he pulverizes and turns into an automobile? (Popeye did a lot of these things in these early cartoons such a punch a big fish and having it turn into hundreds of sardines. Things like that.)

The big fight, held at "Yank-Um Stadium," another pun used many times in cartoons of the '30s and '40s,

This might have been the first cartoon in which Popeye uttered a popular phrase describing himself: "I am what I am and that's all that I am!" He says that after Olive comes into his pre-fight dressing room and says if he boxes, she's going to leave him.

The boxing match, of course, was funny with some unique aspects that drew some laughs from me. Just one example: Bluto's trainer cooling him off waving a towel at his chest and the tattoo of a sailboat sailing off with the breeze. It that's kind of cartoon lunacy that makes this genre entertaining.

Bluto is the boxing champ and Popeye takes him on in the ring. However, Bluto definitely gets the best of him and he pummels Popeye. Fortunately, Popeye uses his own performance enhancing drug, spinach, when Olive brings him a can near the end of the fight. Of course this is blatant cheating but apparently the rules don't apply to our hero. As for Bluto, he really does nothing evil in this one and so if anyone is actually the villain, it's Popeye! Just my two-cents worth!

This is yet another extremely well animated Popeye cartoon. Like the rest from this era, the animation is extremely good and the backgrounds top- notch. So, although they are in black & white, they sure look nice. Enjoyable throughout==even with the bad sportsmanship!

Popeye and Bluto fight a boxing match.

I have mixed feeling about this early Popeye cartoon. On the downside, it's simply and purely the same thing that would be run into the ground over the next twenty years in the series. Popeye and Bluto fight. Bluto is winning until Popeye eats spinach, whereupon Popeye wins. Yawn. Also, Bonnie Poe voices Olive Oyl. I have nothing against her except that she isn't Mae Questal, but even so...

On the plus side, this is the Fleischer era, and one thing director Dave Fleischer always insisted on was lots and lots of gags, big ones and little one. So there's always something interesting to look at.

Let's You and Him Fight (1934)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Popeye and Bluto in the ring fighting it out. I think this is the first of the Popeye shorts that didn't make me laugh a single time. If all you want is action then there's quite a bit here but most of the jokes fall flat on their faces. Wimpy makes a cameo here, which is the highlight of the film.

The Warner 4-disc set features perfect transfers and some great extras. If you're a fan then you'll certainly want to add these great cartoons to your collection.