Howard the Duck has a bad reputation. Its many condemnations include the sometimes used title “worst movie ever made” and four Golden Raspberry Awards (nominated for seven), including the not-so-coveted “Worst Picture.” It has been panned by nearly every film critic in the world, yet I can’t bring myself to hate it entirely. There is some good buried deep within Howard the Duck, but for most viewers, the effort it takes to find it might not be worth the trouble.
Please don’t mistake my reluctance to denounce Howard the Duck as an endorsement or a recommendation. At the end of the day, it remains a poorly made, ill-conceived near-disaster, but I must contest that it could have been a lot worse. That really isn’t saying much, but I don’t think I can ever fully detest a film in which a spastic Tim Robbins utters, with full sincerity, “Thank God you’re back. I’ve been working on the mystery of your arrival!” It’s that kind of writing and delivery that pulls Howard up from the bottom of the swamp to just below the surface of acceptable filmmaking by nature of sheer ridiculousness alone.
That’s not all that had me laughing. When Howard (played by an untold number of dwarfs in an uncomfortable animatronic duck costume) plummets into an alley in Cleveland, the writers waste no time in having him attacked by a gang of vicious brain-dead punk rockers. From there, things move rather slow until Dr. Jennings (Jeffrey Jones) becomes possessed by a Lovecraftian entity known as “The Dark Overlord.” Jones turns on the comedic cosmic horror as his body slowly degenerates and his psychic powers are accentuated by special effects ripped straight out of Ghostbusters.
Again, these are the positives.
The first half of the film involves Howard’s crash landing on Earth and his relationship with Beverly (Lea Thompson, fresh off of Back to the Future), the leader of an all-girl band called Cherry Bomb. She seems unnaturally at ease befriending a wise-cracking duck from outer space, but hey, it was the 80s. I must warn you though, be prepared for all sorts of inter-species innuendo and even a small dose of full-frontal duck nudity. These scenes, even in their campiness, remain eerily awkward and inappropriate for anyone of any age, myself included (I first saw Howard at the ripe age of 9).
Things pick up in the second half as the film moves into a caper/chase motif, but the pacing is still off and the disconnect from the first half is too much to ignore (the pun-laden humor doesn’t improve much either). Even though it becomes a much better movie for a time (the diner scene is especially fun), the ending is still an anticlimactic, haphazard mess – and then there’s the cringe-worthy music video closing sequence to suffer through.
The bad may outweigh the good, but I would still love to sit down, relax, laugh, and watch the chaos unfold with some old friends and several beers. If you’re willing to go the distance and allow yourself some mindless fun, Howard the Duck is far from the worst film of all time. If that’s not your thing, I completely understand and wouldn’t blame you one bit.
One more thing. I don’t recall watching Howard the Duck excessively as a kid, but I must have. I found myself able to recall nearly every line, gag, and plot point moments before they happened. It’s as if this weird little movie somehow stored itself away in my brain for later use – but to what purpose? The implications of such an idea are frightening.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.