Popeye/TRON

It is more than slight praise to say that “Popeye,” released in 1980, is way better than it might have been, seeing the disloyal challenge it gave. However, avoiding disaster is not really the same as success.

Variety said in their review, “To the eye, Robin Williams is terrifically transposed into the squinting sailor with the bulging arms. But to the ear, his mutterings are not always comprehensible.”

Popeye (the late Robin Williams) comes to the pretty village of Sweethaven to look for a father (Ray Walston) who left him and this is his original motivation as he first meets Olive Oyl and obtains his own abandoned baby, Swee’pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt).

Variety noted, “That’s just too much for a cartoon to carry, even with some generally good songs and a wacky, colorfully created town.” Shelley Duvall makes a nice Olive Oyl and Paul L. Smith a rightly jealous Bluto.

Next is the Disney kids’ adventure, “Tron,” released in 1982, trying to exploit on the video game hype, showing the first on-screen attempt to represent what later was called the “cyberspace.” Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a computer-game designer whose superior ideas are always being stolen by the evil company CEO, Ed Dillinger (David Warner).

Flynn is accidentally taken inside a computer component and enters the “Tron” dimension, the imaginatively visualized “world” inside the computer, where he fights with digital villains.

TV Guide stated in their review, “Although TRON's state-of-the-art, computer-generated visuals look primitive by current standards, it's intelligently conceived (on a visual level, at any rate) and largely good fun.” Steven Lisberger, an East Coast animator, directed the visuals, mixing the actors and computer graphics with rewarding results.

TV Guide noted, “At the time of the film's release, Disney was trying to bridge the market from the near-dead "family film" to a more sophisticated product.” The company’s first PG-rated movie at first did poorly at the box office, but when a “TRON”-inspired video game entered the arcades, the film got a great following.

Definitely see “TRON,” as it is one of the first, if not the first, movie about video games and actually was a lot of fun, with great visuals and effects, and still holds up to this day. Also, “Popeye” is a funny movie that you should also see, even though it is a very weird movie.

Check in tomorrow for more excitement in “Disney Live-Action Month.”