By 1941, Fleischer Studio was tottering on the brink of disaster. The failure of their second feature Mr. Bug Goes to Town (which opened three days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor) coupled with a bitter quarrel between Max and Dave Fleischer and a mounting debt to Paramount led to the closure of the Miami Studio. Executives at Parmount fired the Fleischer brothers, installed new management, changed the studio name to Famous, moved operations back to New York City, and cut the artists' pay. Not surprisingly, the quality of the cartoons fell. A number of the shorts in this collection are domestic comedies, with Popeye babysitting the incorrigible Poopdeck Pappy or his four identical and uninteresting nephews. It's an incongruous role for the rough and tumble sailor, and films like "Problem Pappy" and "Me Musical Nephews" recall the joyless cartoons that turned Betty Boop into a hausfrau a few years earlier. Popeye, like Bugs Bunny, is a winner, and he isn't funny as a straight man or a fall guy. These films also lack the original vision that characterized the Fleischers' best work. "Nix on Hypnotricks" feels like an inferior remake of the classic Popeye-Olive-Bluto short "A Dream Walking," while "The Hungry Goat" borrows heavily from Tex Avery's "Tortoise Beats Hare." The war-themed cartoons feature outrageous racial charicatures of the Japanese that make Warner Bros.' "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" look almost flattering. Unlike the Disney and Warners characters, who made fun of the Nazis, Popeye fought the Japanese almost exclusively. The cartoons in Popeye the Sailor, Vol.3 rank as curiosities that are more interesting to historians of animation and American popular culture than to viewers looking for laughs. (Unrated: suitable for ages 10 and older: violence, alcohol and tobacco use, offensive racial stereotypes) --Charles Solomon (1. Problem Pappy, 2. Quiet! Pleeze, 3. Olive's Sweepstakes Ticket, 4. Flies Ain't Human, 5. Popeye Meets Rip Van Winkle, 6. Olive's Boithday Presink, 7. Child Psykolojiky, 8. Pest Pilot, 9. I'll Never Crow Again, 10. The Mighty Navy, 11. Nix on Hypnotricks, 12. Kickin' the Conga 'Round, 13. Blunder Below, 14. Fleets Of Stren'th, 15. Pip-eye, Pup-eye, Poop-eye and Peep-eye, 16. Olive Oyl And Water Don't Mix, 17. Many Tanks, 18. Baby Wants a Bottleship, 19. You're a Sap, Mr. Jap, 20. Alona on the Sarong Seas, 21. A Hull of a Mess, 22. Scrap The Japs, 23. Me Musical Nephews, 24. Spinach Fer Britain, 25. Seein' Red, White 'N' Blue, 26. Too Weak to Work, 27. A Jolly Good Furlough, 28. Ration Fer The Duration, 29. The Hungry Goat, 30. Happy Birthdaze, 31. Wood-Peckin', 31. Cartoons Ain't Human)
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