Word: pea
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Altman has gathered together the whole crew of crazy caricatures and shipped them off to the ramshackle town of Sweethaven. In residence, there are the Oyls, most notably Olive, Popeye's confused and confusing "sweet pattootie"; Swee'pea, Popeye's mischievous "adoptik infink"; the villainous, animal-like Bluto; J. Wellington Wimpy, the hamburger moocher; Rough-House, the short-order cook; Geezil, a boarder at the Oyls; and Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye's long-lost father. Several other bizarre characters skulk about having no apparent role other than adding to the absurdity...
...plot, as in a typical Popeye cartoon, is thin. Popeye arrives in Sweethaven looking for his father. He lodges at the Oyls, becomes smitten with Olive and does battle with her betrothed, Bluto. Popeye eventually finds his father, rescues Olive and Swee'pea from Bluto and, thanks to a handy can of spinach, sends the brute packing...
...remarkable resemblance to the original Olive. Tall and awkward, her loose outfit and clodhoppers emphasize her rubber-legged shapelessness; the wishy-washy, quavering voice ring true. The other characters are instantly recognizable--but that's it. Comic-strip depth does not suffice for a full-length movie. Swee'pea (Altman's grandchild, incidentally) is an exception--a uniquely expressive and, of course, cute baby...
...powers of spinach cure. As a result, his moral force -and he was once one of the great comic-strip exemplars of righteousness tied to a short fuse-appears sicklied o'er with the pale cast of self-absorption. The rest of the characters-excepting Swee'Pea (played by Altman's grandchild, Wesley Ivan Hurt)-are blurs of lost innocence...
...technological, the development in the mid-'60s of the microprocessor, a computer so small that it can be fitted onto a silicon chip no bigger than a pea. As the computer shrank in size and cost, it suddenly became practical as the brains to run a robot. The second development was wage inflation. Two decades ago, a typical assembly-line robot cost about $25,000; that, plus all operating costs over its eight-year lifetime, amounted to about $4.20 an hour, slightly more than the average factory worker's wages and fringe benefits. Today that typical robot costs...