Nurse-Mates

Here's a familiar scene: Popeye and Bluto arriving at Olive Oyl's front door at the exact same time. As Popeye said many times: "Whoa!!!" The cartoon turns out to be a baby-sitting contest, of sorts. After both of the guys ask her out to the movies, her only answer is "I have to go to the beauty parlor. You'll have to look after Swee' Pea until I come back. Here's the list of what to do."

So Popeye and Bluto attempt to give the baby a bath and then dress him. Bluto takes charge, as always and his skit showing how to wash a baby is pretty funny. It probably wouldn't make a cartoon today, deemed child abuse, but Swee' Pea didn't seem to mind! Other gags ensue after Swee' Pea slips out of the small tub and gets ink all over himself. Popeye's solution of "spot remover" works a little too well.

Anyway, slapstick rules this cartoon as one misadventure after another happens with the little guy and the two big lugs trying to help but getting in each other's way. There may not be many laugh-out-loud jokes but it's entertaining to enough to rate a "7."

One note: there is no spinach in this one, which is unusual.

Nurse-Mates (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Bluto and Popeye show up at Olive's house to take her out on a date but she's got a baby there. The men agree to watch him but things don't go as planned.

NURSE-MATES is another very good entry in the early Popeye series and once again it benefits from plenty of fast action as well as the high quality animation that people had come to expect from it. There are many fast-paced action scenes here but the highlight is when the boys are battling each over about the proper way to wash a baby. There's plenty of laughs dealing with the kid being in danger but it's all done in such a way that you can't take it too serious.

There's nothing awful about this one, just nothing really remarkable, save for Pinto Colvig (the voice of Goofy) as Bluto. I've seen it all in other (better) Popeye shorts. Fleischer almost always did visually fantastic cartoons and this one isn't bad. But I see signs of burnout here. They seem to have lost a bit of steam with this one. Oh, well, they can't all be great. Jack Mercer is fine as usual. Recommended for completeists.

Popeye and Bluto show up at Olive's door at the same time, wanting to take her to the movies. Because she needs to go to the beauty parlor, she enlists them to take care of Swee-pea. I have no idea what their relationship is. Anyway, she leaves a list of things they have to do. Of course, they don't have a clue what to do and end up in a fight over every actions. Of course, the baby has more brains and ingenuity than either of them, so things go bonkers. It is well paced and full of fun sight gags.

Popeye and Bluto show up at Olive Oyl's cottage to take her to the movies. She, however, needs to get her hair done. So she leaves both of them there, with instructions on how to take care of Swee'pea.

It's a very nice set-up of gags as the two men compete over who gets to do what with the infink -- sorry, infant -- while trying to sock each other. I have some issues with Swe'pea's character design. It seems to be modeled more on Eugene the Jeep than the child in other Popeye cartoons. There's also one very creepy gag, where Swe'pea has ink on his face and Popeye uses spot remover to get it off, taking away the baby's eyes, nose and mouth with it.