Robin Williams: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

4. Popeye - Popeye (1980)

On the back of his stand-up success and the mass appeal of Mork & Mindy, Williams was first cast in Hamlet (the best adaptation) by Kenneth Branagh, and then as the central character in this affectionate, but not actually all that good homage to the classic sea-faring cartoon. Roundly written off as a flop after missing out on some wildly inflated box office expectations (despite trebling its $20m budget), the film started off from a flimsy foundation when Paramount lost out on the rights to make Annie and looked elsewhere for a musical to adapt from what they already owned the rights to. To be fair to Williams his performance is pretty spot on as the spinach-guzzling sailor with mad forearm skills, but the material is just so poor that he spends the majority of the film swimming against the tide. Or more accurately fighting an irresistible force from the depths dragging him down despite valiant efforts. For a "comedy" the laughs are few and far between (and verging on entirely non-existent) and when you strip away the reasons for casting Williams in the first place (his comic timing, his character work and his charm) in such a way, you end up with a one-note caricature that is no more than an impression without real substance.