Movies
Howard the Duck
The three-foot-tall Marvel Comics hero (three feet, two inches, by his own reckoning) comes to the screen. Would that he hadn't. It may have sounded like a funny idea when someone was drunk or stoned, but after he or they had sobered up, and before they had gone too far with it, didn't they have to try out the duck costume, and the midget inside it, to see if it would fly -- or waddle, or whatever? Only someone not yet sober could have been satisfied with the results here, or with the incessant verbal play on the word "duck": "dead duck," "sitting duck," "ducky," "No duck is an island," Bloomingduck's, MallardCard, ad nauseam. (Critics, even while sneering, have been sucked into the same business.) You can point all the fingers you want to at the lavish and excessive special effects, car crashes, etc., but the movie was fatally bereft of charm from the word go. With Lea Thompson and Jeffrey Jones; executive produced by George Lucas; co-written and directed by Willard Huyck. 1986.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: PG
