Review: Howard the Duck

The title character comes from a planet parallel to ours, only populated by ducks. For half-arsed reasons he ends up on Earth, befriends the lead singer of an all-girl rock band (Lea Thompson) and for some reason she takes him to dorky lab technician Tim Robbins. Jeffrey Jones plays a scientist who takes an interest in Howard, whilst a young Miguel Sandoval is seen briefly as a club owner.

And you thought “The Star Wars Holiday Special” was the only skeleton in George Lucas’ closet. Nope, LucasFilm were also behind this 1986 Marvel Comics-derived turkey from director Willard Huyck and his co-writer Gloria Katz (both of whom helped Lucas write “American Graffiti” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”). It’s…off-putting to say the least. In fact, the only thing here that I even liked was the opening few seconds with a binary sunset just as the ‘George Lucas Presents’ credit came on screen. Given that the ‘Binary Sunset’ moment in “Star Wars: A New Hope” is my favourite moment in any “Star Wars” film, the in-joke tickled my funny bone. I assure you that my funny bone strongly resisted any further tickling during this bizarro, garish mess.

3 minutes in and I was already wishing I was watching “ALF” instead (Along with “The Wonder Years”, it was probably my favourite childhood show). Huyck and Katz should be ashamed of the half-arsed plot set-up here, with the lame manner in which Howard ends up on Earth. How could Lucas attach himself to such shoddy crap? Yeah, OK. “The Star Wars Holiday Special” and “Clone Wars” animated movie are terrible, too. Still, this is really embarrassing. The bare duck breasts are just terrifying, but the really awkward of all awkward moments is the one where she has to act like she’s sexually/romantically interested in the frigging duck. Thompson is incredibly cute and somehow manages to convincingly suggest she doesn’t whole-heartedly hate being in this film. I can’t even imagine how difficult a task that must’ve been. I’d suggest we’ve all been underrating her acting ability all of these years except that her performance is still terrible here.

I don’t think Marvel Studios could do a good “Howard the Duck” movie today, but this is a shocker. For starters, there’s the uneasy mixture of comic book fish-out-of-water comedy nonsense, sci-fi adventure, and an abrasive protagonist, that go together here like oil and water (and that’s putting it mildly). I haven’t read the comics but I have to assume it works a lot better on the inked page and with a lot more sophistication than what we get here. In fact, the way it plays on screen it feels like if “Fritz the Cat” were voiced by Leisure Suit Larry and transplanted onto a mainstream fish-out-of-water comedy/fantasy. It’s no wonder it didn’t find an audience at the time, and I hope Thompson fired her agent for this, and possibly whoever gave her that Debbie Gibson circa 1988 hairdo as well (She certainly makes for a much less convincing rock singer than Diane Lane did two years earlier in “Streets of Fire”). That said, based on what I’ve heard about the comics, the basic idea of an anthropomorphised duck stuck on Earth is actually true to the source…and doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Fish-out-of-water isn’t my favourite plot at the best of times, and on screen here it appears the world Howard came from is rather Earth-like itself, which combined with the talking anthropomorphised duck, seems kind of pointless to me. I mean, at least “ALF” came from a planet where eating cats was a widespread thing. It’s not like “Planet of the Apes” where there was an actual social statement being made, either. Here, Howard’s just a dude that happens to be an anthropomorphised duck and acts largely human, and joins an all-girl rock band. And as the voice of Howard, Chip Zien brings no distinction or personality to the role whatsoever. If Howard is meant to be funny, neither Zien nor the script provide any evidence of comedic talent. Don’t even get me started on the ending, which is completely abrupt and underwhelming to the point where you wonder if funds were cut off by the home stretch (Did they blow the entire budget on the ILM effects that aren’t even that impressive for 1986?). I mean, talk about a lack of ambition for your main character if he’s happy with the way things turn out at the end for him. Meanwhile, the music score is by the usually classy John Barry (“You Only Live Twice”, “Robin and Marian”, and “Body Heat”), and the songs written by Thomas ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ Dolby. The latter is abundantly clear given how awful they are (with all due respect to the singing talents of Thompson and Holly Robinson-Peete, who sang the excellent theme for “21 Jump Street”).

I guess I could say that Tim Robbins at least gives a performance, playing a frazzled and nerdy lab assistant, but I’m not quite prepared to say it’s a good performance so much as it’s as good as the film gets. Poor Jeffrey Jones starts out miscast and just gets unbearably weird in the final third. Familiar faces like Richard Edson, David Paymer, and Miguel Sandoval probably want you to ignore the fact that they’re here.

The most garish, annoying, and awkward piece of 80s shit I’ve come across in a long while. This one never comes close to coming together, and was probably always destined to please precious few. With no clear audience, it easy to see why this flopped.  

Rating: F