"E.C. Segar's cartoon figures were based on music-hall types; Altman and Feiffer exaggerate the music-hall dowdiness for a tone of melancholy futility and clumsiness.... As played by Shelley Duvall, Olive Oyl is a starched, perpendicular lady with flattened face and pointy bun who rocks upward on her construction boots, moaning "Oh, Oh! OH!" Duvall's petulance becomes wearying, but what is she to do? In this movie she can't become a person."
David Denby, New York, Dec. 29, 1980--Jan. 5, 1981
(originally posted here May 27, 2014)
