It's definitely been an enlightening experiment that we've been on these last few weeks. I think the most surprising thing about the whole experience has been how you can find good things in pretty much anything if your attitude reflects a desire to do so. Believe me, I've tried extremely hard to find those films that illicit shudders of revulsion from the masses only to find that the running theme has been that I don't particularly feel like these films deserve the vitriol that they get. Perhaps that's due to how far off the beaten path I go to find movies to watch, but I've yet to watch one of these supposed stinkers and say, "There were absolutely no redeeming qualities to that movie whatsoever!" Last week's romp was pretty close, but in the end, there were still some good things to be had from it. This week's entry is no different. Howard the Duck regularly makes the top 10 of 'Worst Movies of All Time' lists. It's notorious for a number of reasons. It was nominated for seven Golden Raspberries! It's cited as the reason that George Lucas had to sell his computer animation to Steve Jobs who then built it into Pixar. IMDb even points out that coincidentally, Princess Diana was tragically killed while the film was making its television debut in Australia. Coincidence, or conspiracy? You decide! Things get pretty ridiculous where this movie is concerned.
The story is pretty simple. Howard lives on Duck World, and he's ripped through space by a laser machine until he lands on Earth. He saves a musician named Beverly from a couple of menacing 'fans' of hers, and she offers to help him figure out how to get home. She takes him to her band mate's boyfriend, Phil, who immediately gets visions of Nobel prizes and fame, which turns Howard off, so he storms off. He ends up nabbing a temp job cleaning hot tubs for a local bath house/convenient place for folks to grind naughty bits, a job which he quits after one shift. Howard returns to Beverly, they have a moment before they're interrupted by Phil and Phil's scientist friend Dr. Jenning, who caused the accident in the first place. Jenning and Howard and crew all go to the lab where the accident occurred, and in the process, Jenning becomes physically possessed by an alien. Jenning kidnaps Howard and Beverly, but Howard escapes in the confusion created by the police pursuing them. Howard and Phil fix up an ultralight and fly back to the lab. Jenning takes Beverly back to the lab after a stop off at the nuclear power plant for an energy boost so that she can be a vessel for another one of the aliens. Howard and Phil concoct a plan to use a laser developed by Jenning's team, but scrapped to stop the alien infested Jenning. They nearly fail, but Howard saves the day. Unfortunately, Howard has to destroy the laser that could send him home in the process, but it's okay because he had previously freed Beverly and her band from their contract with their deadbeat manager and he's able to become their new more benevolent manager/band mate. The band put together a song with a really catchy beat and everyone lives happily ever after.
WOW! That was a really short recap! I guess there wasn't a whole lot there. That's okay, I don't think there was supposed to be a whole lot there. It was a straightforward attempt at an origin story for an obscure Marvel comic character. This film had a ton going for it. It was written by Willard Hyuck, who had previously penned material for American Graffiti, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was directed by Willard Hyuck. It was produced by George Lucas, and Industrial Light & Magic did the special effects. That's a pretty impressive lineup of players behind the scenes. To top it all off, it starred Lea Thompson, who was coming off of Back to the Future, and perpetual 80s/real life villain, Jeffery Jones. So then what did I notice about the film as I was watching it and intentionally looking for good things about it? Well, first off, I thought that there were a couple of really good mini-montages where we saw things that would help us better get to know Howard. They do a great pan around his apartment at the very beginning, and we get a lot of information about him in a well crafted visual gag. We get another one later when Beverly is going through his wallet. I noticed that the noir-esque feel of the movie at the very beginning was pretty fun. In fact, pretty much every aspect of the Duck world that the crew created were really cool, except the duck puns. However, that little sequence does a lot. There's some commentary on week night TV programming of the 80s as well as a jab at the porn industry and its unrealistic portrayal of women.
Once Howard gets to Earth, there are some pretty good things going on as well. Off the bat, we get a brief bit of discourse on toxic fandom. It's really short, but it tells volumes about the world that awaited us back in 1986. I thought that the way that Beverly's awkward first contact experience was probably pretty accurate. As a Trekkie, I'd like to think that we'd get a first contact scenario like that of Zephram Cochrane in Star Trek First Contact, but as a living, breathing human being, I know that it would probably be more like Beverly's. That's fine. She's not a Mary Sued character with a ton of hidden abilities that she just has because the plot demands it. She represents an average human in an extraordinary situation, and I think that she is portrayed accordingly. In fact, I think most of the characters are portrayed fairly accurately to real life. Phil, as an aspiring scientist, is looking for his big break and sees that in Howard. He reacts according to that motivation. Jenning is a seasoned scientist who has seen a lot and since he kind of knows what's going on, he knows that he can help, and is eager to do so because he knows that Howard doesn't belong on Earth. Beverly is a struggling musician and she comes across as such. In fact, the only character that's hard to get a handle on is Howard, and that's a missed opportunity because I think if the writers could have nailed down a definite personality for the character, it would have helped things tremendously.
There were also some pretty memorable background characters. The employment specialist lady was fantastic! You can tell she's just the saltiest, and she doesn't take crap off of anyone! It's just great! The bath house guy is also pretty funny in his own right, but since he wasn't supposed to be terribly likable, he came across as appropriately unlikable. Speaking of motivations, I thought it was pretty gosh darn cool how bad I felt for Jenning. True, he had been fiddling with the fundamental laws that hold our universe together, but dude got shafted. He tried so hard to warn Howard and Beverly that something was amiss, and he fought back with all that he had. He helped save the day once he was released from the clutches of the alien overlord. He was a stand up guy. There were also some background characters that maybe weren't so great. I thought that the diner group may have whipped into a frenzy a little too easily. But I couldn't tell you for sure how I would react if I were to find myself face-to-face with a lifeform from another planet so I suppose we can give them the benefit of the doubt. What I find difficult to overlook is the nuclear technician at the power plant who says, "nucular power plant." That's a rookie mistake, buddy. However, most of these background characters fit into the world well, and do what they need to do for purposes of the narrative.
Who would have thought that Lea Thompson could sing so well?! That's right, she did all of her vocals on all of the songs that featured her character. Good for you Lea! Speaking of, some of those songs were quite catchy. Some served to give us awkward pop rock music montages to describe the inner thoughts of the characters during certain scenes, and that was not as catchy, but at least they weren't, like, the Macarena or something. Most of them were mostly palatable to listen to. That theme song was really darn catchy! I couldn't stop tapping my foot. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't exactly a good song, it just also wasn't exactly a bad song. The lyrics were a bit awkward, but the beat and the melody were fun to listen to. Since we're on it, I usually look at the IMDb trivia when I do these things and I read that John Barry had a good bit of his score replaced because the producers thought it was too 'old fashioned'. I'm not sure what parts of the remaining score he did, and what parts were from the other guy, but it was pretty okay. I like John Barry well enough. Gotta give respect to the guy who wrote the James Bond theme, and I liked what he did about as much as I expected to. Actually, the score kind of had the same vibe that I got from the 1994 Fantastic Four movie's score, and I like that one a lot, all 13 minutes of it, so perhaps that had a lot to do with how I felt about things. Generally, I enjoyed that aspect of this movie.
There are a few things for which this film has become infamous. The most notorious thing is the interspecies 'sex scene'. I just want to say that although it was still kind of out of left field, I didn't really get that vibe at any time during the scene. It felt more to me like someone giving someone else a hard time by trying to make them really uncomfortable. I've been in this situation plenty of times in my youth and so I know what Howard is feeling throughout. I get it buddy. The scene did creepy harassment well, but at no point did I get the impression that Lea Thompson was about to dive head long into a bestiality fetish. They kissed, she was in her sleepwear, he was in his sleepwear, they should have been in separate beds probably, but I think this scene gets blown out of proportion for dramatic effect. It was awkward to watch for sure, but I think more than anything that's because the relationship between Beverly and Howard hadn't been developed well enough beforehand to support what was being tried. If the relationship had been firmly established as purely platonic, of even if Howard had been shown to have some sort of sexual attraction to Beverly, then Beverly sexually harassing Howard would have at least fit the narrative better. I caught the naked duck woman. I hadn't known before that that I had ever wondered what an anthropomorphized female duck would look like nude, and after seeing it, I'm certain that I really didn't ever want to know. I'll give that one to the hecklers.
The elephant in the room for me was the overall tone of the film. It was lopsided. We go from naked anthropomorphized duck boobs to kid-friendly duck puns in spans of less than a second. I felt throughout the whole viewing that the film should just have embraced the R rating. I know that Universal and everyone involved was probably hoping to make something for the whole family, and I'll admit to knowing nothing of the character beyond the film, unfortunately, but I felt the whole time that the film pushed that "R" boundary so much that the writers and producers should just have thrown caution to the wind and done what came naturally per the source material. It probably still would have bombed, but at least it probably would have bombed because it was a reasonably solid film that was tailored to a niche crowd instead of bombing because it was a confused film trying to please too broad an audience. And believe me, it was confused. It was more confused than 12 year old me after my first week of sex ed. I couldn't tell whether they wanted Howard to likable, or unlikable, and so he was kind of neither to me for most of the film. I liked him more toward the end when his motivations finally came together, but that process was just a bit too uneven for me to enjoy along the way.
Ending on the positive, I will say that the makeup and creature effects done with Howard were pretty awesome. I found myself marveling at how expressive Howard's face could be, and although 35 year old me knew it was just a costume and an animatronic mask, I found that I could still buy it, even after 30+ years. Also, I thought it was a really fun touch, intentional or otherwise, that Howard lands on Earth on the 20th birthday of Star Trek. The movie really did have its moments, and I think that it actually did accomplish what is set out to do for the most part. It told an origin story of an obscure Marvel comic character. It also got me curious about Howard the Duck as a character in the comics. I may prod around and try to learn a bit more about how he's portrayed in his comics as a result of this experience just so I can compare and contrast a bit more. I'd call that a definite win for Marvel. Is it cinematic genius? No. But it is mostly a fun romp through which you can turn off your brain, and we need those in our lives from time to time. I wouldn't go out of your way to give this one a watch, but I really think that the hate is exaggerated to a large degree. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Next week I'll be reviewing the last of my 'Worst Movies of All Time', and it's a movie that I've never seen! It should prove to be a fascinating experience so stick around!
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