Gone With The Wing

Our next Popeye short is called Olive's $weep$take Ticket.  That's right... there's dollar signs in the title!  Epic.  And at long last, Olive has returned to the Popeye cartoons.  She's been gone for a while!  So not only is the cartoon about her, even if only tangentially, she even gets the introductory scene!  She's knitting quietly, when suddenly... the phone rings.  Ooh!  Good plotting.  She gets the news that her sweepstakes ticket is the winning one.  She does a rather massive double take in response.  I hate to spoil it.  Anyway, she starts looking for the ticket.  Where did she place it?  It seemed so unimportant at the time.
Enter Popeye.  Popeye has to let himself in, which normally would be totally rude and all, but Olive's pretty engrossed in the task at hand, so she's cool with it.  Olive tells Popeye the good news, and Popeye begins to dream of riches beyond compare.  Burning money with his new crystallized corn cob pipe, walking around in New York in fur coats, stepping around dog poo, what have you.  Now, maybe I'm just jaded, but somehow I just knew that that wasn't gonna happen!  Don't movie stars realize they have something better than wealth?  Being in show business?  Somehow it's still not enough.
Eventually, the ticket is found.  I hate to spoil the gag, but it's a bit like the handcuff gag in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, spoiler alert.  Now, as in Jumanji, the filmmakers somehow instinctively knew that they'd have to stretch things out to feature length.  Hence the constant interruptions!  And weren't they wonderful?  And weren't the CGI creatures so weird looking?  Well, the 90s was a rather experimental time.  And so, the ticket goes flying out the window.  Popeye must go get it.  To the Adventure-Mobile!
I hate to spoil the fun of the chase, but there's a brief stint where the ticket gets water-logged in the sea, and taken by a fish, of course.  Reminded me a bit of Females is Fickle.  Alas, we get back to land, where Popeye must negotiate his way through everything from speeding trains to speeding cars.  Ultimately, he gets the ticket back... just after it flies into a gymnasium.  "Hey, look!  A sweepstakes ticket!" says a rather butch voice.  Spinach time?  ...SPOILER ALERT!  No spinach time!  What a ripoff.
Act Three - Popeye returns to Olive's place, a lot worse for the wear... is that the right expression?  Olive rushes to the theater to cash in that damn ticket!  Popeye's running along behind, trying to catch up, but his shoes are no longer covering his feet very well.  I hate to spoil the surprise, but let me just say they don't end with a cheap "Gimme the bird!" joke... like SOME cartoons I won't mention... okay, it was in A Tale of Two Kitties.  Love that cartoon.  Way better than the actual Abbott & Costello!

***1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan