#Middlebury #Movies
Humans crave news and entertainment, and there’s no better place to get it than your local newspaper. Alongside stories of this and that, you get recipes and notices of sales, puzzles and games, and of course, the comics section. Comic strips have fascinated us since the earliest days of The Yellow Kid, a simple gag panel featuring a bald boy in a yellow nightdress. Who knew? But these artful characters and situations draw us in, and delight and connect us. Here are six comic strips that jumped off the funny pages to the big screen!
“Garfield” – America’s favorite lasagna-loving cat enjoys napping and eating while tolerating dim-witted but sweet Odie. In the 2004 movie version, Jon is talked into adopting a dog (Odie) who the local weather anchor plots to steal, forcing Garfield (voiced by Bill Murray) to reluctantly save him. Garfield is CGI, but the rest of the gang is live action, including Breckin Meyer as Jon and Stephen Tobolowsky as the villainous Happy Chapman. My children love this movie and I have seen it 4,000 times.
“Dick Tracy” – Warren Beatty’s hard-boiled detective movie featured iconic art direction and faithfulness to the characters and tone of the strip, but it didn’t wow audiences at the time – even with Madonna as Breathless Mahoney, the songstress dame who may be a witness against crime boss Big Boy (Al Pacino off his rocker), but who expends a lot of energy trying to tempt Tracy away from Tess, his girlfriend.
“Dennis the Menace” – In the 1993 film version, George Wilson (Walter Matthau) and wife Martha (Joan Plowright) are next-door neighbors who end up as a pinch-hitter babysitters for Dennis – an angelic-looking but trouble-attracting child – when his parents must go out of town. When Dennis gets taken hostage by a town robber, cranky old George must play the hero.
Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall in “Popeye” (Paramount/Walt Disney photo)
“Flash Gordon” – An absolute icon of camp, this adventure features a football star (Flash, played by Sam Jones) and a travel agent (Dale, played by Melody Anderson) who escape dodgy Earth conditions and accompany a scientist (Dr. Zarkov, played by Topol) in a spaceship to the planet Mongo. There they battle the evil Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow) for the future of Earth itself.
“Popeye” – Robin Williams pipes life and heart into the punch-packing, spinach-eating sailor man, Popeye, as he visits the waterfront town of Sweetwater looking for his dad. There he encounters loveable folk, including soon-to-be-sweetheart Olive Oyl (magnificently played by Shelley Duvall) and an orphaned baby, Swee’Pea.
“Annie” – The comic strip that became a Broadway musical that became a movie (more than once), all down to a little girl who goes full rags to riches when she’s plucked from an orphanage (headed by Carol Burnett’s Mrs. Hannigan) to spend a week with Daddy Warbucks (Albert Finney) in the midst of the Great Depression.
© 2021 King Features Synd., Inc.
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