Howard the Duck (1986)

Director: Willard Huyck

Writers: Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz

Composers: John Barry, Sylvester Levay

Starring: Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins, Ed Gale, Liz Sagal, Dominique Davalos, Holly Robinson Peele, David Paymer, Richard Kiley

More info: IMDb

Tagline: You will believe that a duck can talk.

Plot: A sarcastic humanoid duck is pulled from his homeworld to Earth where he must stop an alien invader.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I FINALLY got around to seeing this infamous turd.  It's a jumbled mess of a film but there's some good in there, too.  I really liked the duck outfit and mechanics.  It's really good and the character of Howard is fun.  Now that I'm thinking about it, he's hands down the best part of the picture.  Jeffrey Jones is good, too.  But it's so many characters and actors surrounding them that are obnoxious and annoying as fuck.  I'm shocked at how over the top Robbins took his character.  It's awful.  The comedy is a mixed bag of sometimes funny duck gags and farce, most of the latter doesn't work unless your five years old.  And it's nearly two hours long which surprised the hell out of me but it's well paced.  It's one of the few comics that I've dabbled in (what I read was from the first few issues of the comics from the 70s) and, unless my memory has failed me yet again, this film doesn't fall far from its origins.  I'm willing to be that if you never saw the movie, read the early comics and then read the script you'd have a much higher opinion of it.  It's what happens taking that context and moving it to film that I think is where the movie failed.  Otherwise, it'd probably be A-OK.  I love composer John Barry's music as a whole but he was poorly chosen to score this film.  He's known for his lush themes and romanticism, not for scoring action comedies.  The 70s and 80s John Barry is different than the 60s man doing his early Bond pictures. Apparently the filmmakers weren't happy with what Barry brought to the table (I blame them more than Barry) and hired Sylvester Levay to write some better action cues.  I was impressed to learn this because he wrote in the style of Barry.  It still didn't work but it might've been more appropriate than what Barry wrote. I didn't realize that this was the first Marvel Comics property to get a feature film.  My how far they've come. The Universal DVD is loaded with extras and is pretty cheap online.