Feather Plucking With Lea Thompson

When Howard The Duck was released nearly 24 years ago, it was regarded as a monumental flop. A turkey. A critical and financial disaster so great that upon it's UK release the title was changed to Howard: A New Breed Of Hero and all sight of the feathered star was removed from the posters. Still, the passage of time has a way of being kind to movies. Take Blade Runner and The Thing; hated upon their original releases and regarded as classics today. Now while I never, ever expected Howard to gain classic status, I did think that Howard may become a cult favorite...something that would be fondly recalled and mentioned amongst fans of blockbuster fantasy films.

Alas not. Most people today have never heard of Howard The Duck The Movie, the obscure Marvel comic book he was based upon, or even if they have, still revile the film to this day.

For better or for worse, I still think it's great fun. It's undoubtedly terribly flawed, but still entertaining despite them. Perhaps the most obvious mistake was to proceed with a Howard adaptation before the technology was there to do it properly. If done today, Howard would undoubtedly be a CGI creation (like Scooby Doo or Garfield). If Executive Producer George Lucas had waited just 2 year, he could have presented Howard as a piece of traditional 2D animation (as in Who Framed Roger Rabbit). But no, they went for a midget in a duck suit. To be fair, the duck costume looks fine and is very expressive...especially combined with the snarky vocal skills of Chip Zien, but it never convinces as anything other than a small chap in a feathered disguise. So when characters, and the general public start reacting to Howard as a freakish, bizarre alien...it feels false and undermines the whole enterprise.

The other big, major flaw of the film is one of tone. It's extremely uneven. On the one side it plays as a kids film with a fluffy, cuddly protagonist, juvenile jokes and performances that are pitched over-the-top with broad, larger-than-life mugging to the camera. On the other hand Howard himself is mature and cynical, reads soft porn, enters the sleazy Earthbound world of rock n roll and has a suggestive sexual relationship with a hot chick. The schizophrenic nature isn't very cohesive. A more deadpan approach, such as Men In Black , might have melded the contradicting elements better.

But there's plenty to like on the film too. Lea Thompson is enthusiastic and sexy, giving the film real energy. Jeffery Jones, wisely playing it straighter than everybody else, delivers one of the all-time great movie villains. Jones's Dark Overlord of the Universe is all silly voice, mischvious simmering, ambitious menace and has the sharpest one-liners of the movie. A young Tim Robbins dumbs it down as Phil, in the sidekick/comic relief role, and does a great job too ("No sex now...I'm working!").

The origin plot is more original, better constructed and faster paced than many lesser superhero movies these days while John Barry provides an epic score, ably assisted by some additional music by Sylvester Levey (frustratingly never released). ILM's effects work is on the tail-end of their 'classic period', being well up to scratch, especially Phil Tippett's design and execution of the Dark Overlord in it's true form (even with the advances in CG made since Jurassic Park, the stop motion here is superior to most stuff today). And while horribly dated, Thomas Dolby songs now come across as cheesy, they're still very catchy.

So if you like your comic book adaptations bizarre AND you can put ypurself in the mindset of an 8 year old, there's something to enjoy in Howard the Duck. If not, you're in for a world of hurt...