LOST AND FOUNDRY (1937) – Damn, Swee’pea, enough already!

LostAndFoundry

Popeye is on a lunch break outside the factory where he works. Olive, with baby Swee’Pea in tow, happens by and sits with Popeye. Time to place bets on how long before the pair get distracted and Swee’Pea does his crawling-within-an-inch-of-my-life routine from his debut cartoon, Little Swee’Pea (1936). (Quite a factory, too — it looks like a cross between Charlie Chaplin’s joint in Modern Times and the nasty club initiation in Popeye’s Can You Take It?).

As with the earlier Swee’Pea cartoon, the saving-Swee’Pea ritual is enlivened by the Fleischers’ astounding perspective work and on-the-nose pacing. In the end, Swee’Pea downs some spinach and actually ends up saving Popeye and Olive, and he even gets to do the closing theme as a reward for his (!) trouble.

On a rating scale of 1 to 4 spinach cans, I give this cartoon: CanCanCanCanHalf

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