Howard the Duck (1986)

Due to a scientific accident, snarky Howard the Duck is transported from his planet of intelligent ducks to Earth. He befriends Beverly (Lea Thompson) who introduces him to her lab-assistant friend, Phil (Tim Robbins), who in turn, puts him in contact with Dr Walter Jennings (Jeffrey Jones), the man behind the original experiment. In attempting to return Howard to his home, Jennings and company pull a demon to Earth.

I remembered little of Howard the Duck besides not hating it. And as so many people claim to hate it for reasons that are stupid (“A movie with a talking duck is a bad idea”; “Lea Thompson with Howard is icky”), I figured it must be pretty good. So I re-watched it thirty years later; I still don’t hate it, but it is not pretty good.

On the plus side, there’s the basic idea of Howard: a duck with attitude used to comment on our society and delve into psychology. At least that’s what he is in the comics, and some of that comes through—well, a little bit. Lea Thompson is adorable (a term I find myself using more and more for cute females stuck in weak comic book movies), and Jeffrey Jones doesn’t embarrass himself.

That’s about it. It felt like it was going in the right direction at the start, but that didn’t last. With the satire removed, there isn’t much for anyone over ten, which is odd as a lot of the humor at the beginning leans toward the adult. But then the film turns into a slapstick kiddy show. There’s a long—so very long—chase with Howard and Tim Robbins where not crashing is supposed to be very funny, over and over again. Robbins won an Oscar in 2004 and several Golden Globe. Huh. No. No, that’s got to be wrong. No way the guy in this film ever won an acting award. Or had a career after this. There’s a monster designed by Industrial Light & Magic which would be fine in a comedy, but by then Howard the Duck has become an action flick and the special effects aren’t up for that. It is the shabbiest work I can recall from ILM. But SFX and acting are minor problems. It’s the script that pulls it all down.

Howard the Duck was a George Lucas project, but he neither wrote nor directed it. While the Star Wars prequels made me think that hands off is good when Lucas is involved, in this case, I wish he’d dug in.