Saturday, May 10, 2014

Howard the Duck (1986)

How bad is it? It's a little below average.
Should you see it? Only if you want to prove that budget doesn't make for good films.

I'll admit it: I still own a copy of a Howard the Duck comic book. Whether it was a rip-off, lampoon or straight-up anti-hero comic book is still debatable, but the best part of it was that the artwork style and writing style changed with every story - that doesn't translate well to film.

The problem with the film is that there is no idea what the audience is or what they want. The small number of people who were familiar with the character weren't even much help with that, but the film made Howard too cute and his love affair with Lea Thompson icky (you have to think of bestiality) and the comedy doesn't work, either. Jeffery Jones makes a good villain (given what happened in his real life, apparently not much of a stretch), but the monster at the end was impossible to make out - it's much clearer on the small screen - and neither frightening nor silly.

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