Howard The Duck – Full Uncut Version
Reviewer: Tom Leins
Issue 101 March 2008
(2 votes, average: 6 out of 10)
click on the stars to submit your rating
Loading …
Is Howard still a lame Duck? Yes.
The Lowdown: Cheeky, beer-swilling duck Howard is minding his own business over in Duckland when an experiment on Earth using a laser beam sucks him halfway across the cosmos to an alleyway in Cleveland, Ohio. Howard is ill at ease in his new surroundings, but local rock singer Beverly soon helps him settle in…
Review: Howard The Duck’s dreadful reputation precedes it, and it is widely regarded as the worst Marvel comic adaptation of all time. After seeing it for myself I’d be hard-pressed to disagree… If stories are to be believed, George Lucas spent $2 million on the duck suit alone, and employed eight different actors to work inside the costume – which sums up quite how ridiculous this whole endeavour actually was. The resolutely unfunny, embarrassingly half-arsed dialogue and paper-thin plot are held together by a singularly unappealing lead character, and Howard The Duck remains too weird for kids and not weird enough for adults.
The word tiresome really doesn’t do it justice. Husband and wife team Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz had previously contributed screenplays to both American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and were actually held in fairly high regard before helming this debacle. Tellingly, neither of them worked on anything remotely important ever again. Often, yesterday’s filmic flops become today’s guilty pleasures. In the case of Howard The Duck however, time hasn’t managed to dull the film’s awfulness. This is an unequivocal mess of a movie that really shouldn’t exist. At least we can take solace in the fact that it scuppered George Lucas’s attempts at Hollywood domination! The sole extra is a theatrical trailer, so I guess that the cast and crew weren’t keen to revisit the scene of the crime and come up with a retrospective documentary.
FILM: 3 EXTRAS: 1
DVD Info:
Certificate: PG
Starring: Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins, Ed Gale
Directed By: Willard Huyck, 1986
Distributor: Metrodome
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0
Visuals: 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Running Time: 111mins
Price: £12.99
Film supplied by: Metrodome
Special Features:
Scene Selection
Original Theatrical Trailer
