Howard the Duck (1986)
Article 5873 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-26-2020
Directed by Willard Huyck
Featuring Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins
Country: USA
What it is: … no, I’m not going to make duck pun

An anthropomorphic duck is brought to this world from another universe. He seeks a way to return home, but complications arise when an evil force from outer space plots an invasion of Earth.

I’ve never read any Howard the Duck comic books, so I really don’t know what they were like. I did, however, see images of him, and the one thing that always bothered me was that I felt the design of the character of the movie looked less like the duck from the comic book and more like Yakky Doodle. Today, though, marks the first time I actually saw the movie. After sitting through an hour and a half of half-baked duck jokes, frenetic action sequences, special effects, lame slapstick, and cuteness, I found myself sitting there and thinking that there hasn’t been a single moment of this movie that didn’t feel forced and contrived. If there’s any philosophy around the making of this movie, I suspect it was that if they threw enough money at it, it would compensate for the appallingly dismal script. It wasn’t fun or funny; it was just loud and annoying. I don’t know if it’s in the running for the worst film ever made, but I do know that it feels like one of the most saddening wastes of money I’ve ever seen.