Having rediscovered the “I Yam What I Yam”/ “He Needs Me” single from the Popeye film soundtrack in my stack of basement 45s, I rented the whole movie from Netflix and gave it a big build-up to my daughters: “They look just like Olive Oyl and Popeye and Bluto and Wimpy, but they’re real people! The songs are by the guy who did ‘The Lime and the Coconut’!” And the ultimate come-on: “There’s a baby in it!”

Mabel and Sally got duly excited. They fetched some bendy dolls they have of the Popeye character, while I grabbed the huge book 100 Years of Comic Strips to show them some of E.C. Segar’s old Thimble Theatre strips which inspired the look of the film.

Then we all sat rapt before the screen as Sweethaven appeared, Brigadoon-like, before our astonished (unpopped) eyes.

Removed from the bewilderment, scorn and disappointment which met the film upon its release, Popeye holds up just fine. In this cartoony milieu, Robin Williams actually comes off as understated. His low-key mumbling is ideal for a film in which he is not so much the star as he is a befuddled visitor. Like most Robert Altman films, this one celebrates community. Williams doesn’t dominate; he fits it, despite those ungainly forearms.

Once the octopus had been undone and two generations of popeyed men had sailed off victoriously, the girls scoured the 100 Years of Comic Strips book and found a Segar scenario which had been staged virtually verbatim in the film. I, meanwhile, luxuriated in the closing credits: Paul Dooley! Ray Walston! McIntyre Dixon! Nilsson! Van Dyke Parks! Klaus Voorman! Plus that baby, Altman’s own grandson. The child, Swee’pea, is an active participant in one of the most touching, sweetest verbal exchanges in the whole picture—with Robin Williams no less, who in his earliest films was regularly criticized for barely interacting with his castmates.

Here’s how it goes: Popeye has discovered orphan babe Swee’pea in a basket. He’s reading a loud from the abandonment letter pinned to Swee’peas swaddling: “Love him like a mudder. Signed, a mudder.” In the midst of this recitation, the perky Swee’pea, unbidden, blurts out “Ba Ba Ba Ba!”

“That’s right,” Williams rejoinds. “You’re a baby. Says so right here.”