Choose Your 'Weppins'

Policeman Wimpy is handcuffed to a well-dressed criminal. While Wimpy is distracted by a hamburger place, the prisoner brings out his skeleton key and escapes. He enters a pawn shop run by Popeye and Olive Oyl. He demands $10 from Olive Oyl and that begins a fight with Popeye. It's lunchtime and Olive Oyl lays out the spinach for Popeye.

I know that Popeye often has different jobs than simply being a sailor. He could have a sea-centric shop. Also the bad guy should be Bluto. I don't know this guy. I'm not sure why he's all dressed up. Wimpy could do more. The story is pretty simple. This is perfectly fine, but it's nothing special.

Choose Yer 'Weppins' (1935)

*** (out of 4)

Popeye is running a pawn shop when a man enters demanding to sell some knives, which aren't worth a dime yet he insists on more money. There aren't a lot of laughs here but the ones we do get are good enough to make this film worth seeing. The highlight of the film is when Popeye must prove to the man that the knives aren't worth very much money and he does this by trying to cut a piece of the man's hair, which of course doesn't work and leads to a funny joke. Wimpy also makes a short appearance as a cop who was originally taking the man to jail but gets sidetracked by a hamburger store.

After the first few minutes it looked like this was going to be a fairly weak Popeye cartoon but - wow - it got terrific and stayed that way until the end. The attraction: a lot of legitimately funny and clever sight gags.

There is no Bluto in this one, which is a nice change-of-pace but we have a villain, a mustachioed-guy who looks like the old silent-era villain "Oil Can Harry" who would tie up women and leave them on the railroad tracks.

Here, this villain is handcuffed early on by Wimpy, who is a cop, believe it or not. However, predictably, Wimpy is inept and quickly he loses the criminal he has handcuffed to him when he gets distracted by - you guessed it - hamburgers. The crook just happens to have a coat full of skeleton keys and other escape mechanisms so he splits and heads for the nearby Popeye's Pawn Shop

That's where the real fun starts and I wouldn't want to spoil it. Suffice to say you see a lot of wild scenes between the criminal, Popeye and Olive and some duels you can't believe. The name of this cartoon refers to all the various weapons these guys use in their duels. To this day, this is a very original material which I haven't seen on any other cartoons.

An elegantly dressed crook escapes from officer Wimpy's handcuffs and makes his way into Popeye's pawn shop. There he gets into a duel with Popeye involving swords.

It's a very good Fleischer Popeye cartoon because of the large varieties of gags, both large and small. In addition, Olive Oyl, as Popeye's assistant, gets more to do than usual. She not only plays mumblety-peg with a bunch of knives, but she gets involved with the inevitable fight between Popeye and the enormous crook.

The great number of gags was a hallmark of the Fleischer cartoons. Director Dave Fleischer insisted on them, and his staff was happy to comply, and the audience was happy to laugh.

Dave Fleischer was responsible for many gems. Ones that were amusing and charming, though over-cuteness did come through in some efforts and the stories were always pretty thin, with appealing characters, outstanding music and visuals that were inventive and with innovative animation techniques.

'Choose Your Weppins' for me is among my favourites from this particular period of the Fleischer output. Despite liking many of Popeye's cartoons almost all the best came from the Fleischer era, Fleischer's efforts were always well animated and scored with lots of entertainment value and great chemistry between Popeye, Olive Oyl and Bluto. 'Choose Your Weppins' has everything that makes the Popeye series so appealing in its prime era and does nothing to waste the main characters or make them less interesting. It is also a nice change of pace, being a cartoon (not the first or the last) where Bluto is absent, and the story is less reliant on formula.

The story is an interesting and beautifully paced one, never being dull, and due to being a change of pace for Popeye it is not as formulaic. Sense is not a strong suit but in all honesty nobody looks for that and it is so easy to overlook. The humour and gags make it even more entertaining, avoiding the trap of repetition and actually being deliciously wild and imaginative.

All the characters are great. Although Olive Oyl is a little underused as she did tend to be around this point she is fun to watch. Popeye is always amusing and likeable and his role here is imaginatively handled and Wimpy is enormously entertaining in his short appearance. It is the prisoner though who steals the cartoon, very amusing and equally menacing.

Furthermore, the animation is beautifully drawn and with enough visual detail to not make it cluttered or static and lively and smooth movement. The music is also outstanding, lots of merry energy and lush orchestration, adding a lot to the action and making the impact even better without being too cartoonish. Fleischer's direction is always accomplished and his style is all over it.

Voice acting is dynamic and of very good quality. William Costello does a nice job as Popeye, have a preference for Jack Mercer though. It is hard to imagine anybody else as Olive Oyl other than Mae Questel while Gus Wickie brings a lot of amusing and imposing character to the prisoner.

Overall, a terrific Popeye cartoon as one can hope. 9/10 Bethany Cox