"Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy" is a 47-minute animated short film from over 10 years ago. The version i watched ran for 47 minutes, but I see there's apparently also one that runs for 44 only and fulfills the short film criteria according to IMDb, even if I did not find it. Anyway, this is about Popeye, the famous sailor and people who have seen his old cartoons from clearly over half a century ago may have a hard time adjusting to this modern style of animation. But if you do manage, you will be rewarded. I thought this was a good version of the sailor stories. I think they managed a nice balance between new aspects (Bluto is not the bad guy really) and the traditional values (Popeye eating his spinach in the end to get superpowers). The film delivers in terms of drama (surprisingly) and comedy. Of course with this runtime there are no jokes every 15 seconds like in the 7-minute cartoons, but this simply would not be possible The ones that are there are working and I also liked the animation. nice idea that almost all the action takes place on a ship, which adds a lot to the sailor reference again. One of the people who made this is successful actor and Golden Globe nominee Paul Reiser, which surprised me a bit. All in all, I say good job to everybody who worked on this, also the great voice acting cast who nailed their parts, and I recommend checking it out. Too bad no sequels were made afterward. Maybe the reason i enjoyed it is that I am not the greatest fan of the old Popeye cartoons and occasionally consider them quantity over quality.

I loved this Popeye adventure. From the voice renditions, to the off-hand muttering by Popeye, right down to Pappy's scrappy lovable nature, Bluto's rough and tumble ignorance, Olive Oyl's firm-handed yet loyal nature, Sweet Pea's way of communicating without actual words and Wimpy's gad-about hand-out always hungry silliness, this movie had all the flavor of the great black and white classics!! Mainstream entertainment should be proud of this accomplishment. With beautiful textures, picture perfect models and beautiful atmospherics, they managed to capture everything I loved about Popeye as a boy. My hat is off to Paul Reiser and everyone else involved.

As of this writing, Popeye has just turned 76 years old, or at least has celebrated that number of years since he first appeared as (at first) just a minor character, bit player. Little did has creator know that the one-eyed sailor would take over the spotlight in such short order following his January 1929 debut.The comic strip, THIMBLE THEATER by cartoonist Elzie C. Segar, dated back to 1919 and featured Olive Oyl and her brother Castor Oyl, as well as others such as Wimpy, Hamm Gravy, Rough House.Within a few short years,this scene stealing Sailor Man, Popeye, emerged as the Star of the show. Soon, the daily strip was joined by a Sunday version in the Hearst Newspapers' Color Comics, PUCK,THE COMIC WEEKLY. This in turn led to master animators Max and Dave Fleisher negotiating the rights to produce Popeye cartoon shorts for release through Paramount Pictures Corporation.Over the ensuing years, other animated series Paramount's Famous Studios as well as several made for T.V. products appeared. There was also a Popeye radio show and who could forget the 1980 POPEYE feature with Robin Williams. Changes were sure to show up in the story lines, such as Popeye's donning the uniform of the U.S.Navy for his service aboard the mythical Battleship,"the U.S.S.Pennsyltucky", during World War II.The latter cartoons suffered from becoming extremely formula. It was always Popeye and Olive have some sort of spat, Bluto enters picture offering what is eventually too much attention,after the obligatory cries of "Help!Help!"from Miss Oyl, Popeye fights Bluto to save Olive by using his can of Spinach.POPEYE's VOYAGE puts the venerable seaman back into really good light. Though it features modern computer processes, he hasn't looked better in years or rather decades. (The appearance of fullness and depth gives it a sort of 3 D look which is somewhat reminiscent of the Fleischer Brothers' Table Top Process. Let's hope that we'll see more of the old Thimble Theater gang from this production team.UPDATE!!!UPDATE!!!UPDATE!!!..........Dateline Chicago, Illinois, June 11, 2011. Although the film is still listed as being just in Video (V), it was shown over the NBC TV Network(I believe).It was in the Year of Our Lord, 2004. Our whole family watched it while visiting Grammaw Jones (my Late Mother-in-Law, Clarice Jones) in Central City, Kentucky on THANKSGIVING Weekend, 2004.

Been a LOYAL Popeye fan for over 40 years and this is WELL worth the purchase! Billy West's Popeye voice is EXACT to long time original voice Jack Mercer....thru the mumblings, singing, and voice characteristics hes stupendous! Olives and Bluto's is also Fantastic and VERY close to the originals. GREAT,GREAT special and 3-d animation!!! Music for the special is GREAT also...Mark M. Does a wonderful job.... For all you POPEYE fans, it is unbelievable how they redid the special to the Fleischer era and adopt for today... The only thing missing is Bluto and Popeye as enemy's, but maybe for todays children it isn't that bad.