Thursday, July 7, 2016

"Howard the Duck"

To fulfill the deep need for probing philosophy, there was only one direction to turn:  Howard the Duck.

I knew the movie existed but I don't think I ever watched it and that was remedied yesterday.

Gadzooks, what a surprise.


The first surprise was seeing George Lucas directed it and that was followed by titling which looked like it was straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  That got us thinking about ducks and Harrison Ford ... but it was only starting to get weird.


Then we saw Lea Thompson stars in the movie and she's the girl who played Michael J. Fox's mother / girlfriend in "Back to the Future" but, in this case, she gets the man, erm, the duck.


It's wasn't really weird enough yet so then we moved to human / duck porno and I kicked out before it started because I didn't think I was quite ready for that even though Lea Thompson is a comely lass and I'm sure Howard is an attractive duck, as talking ducks go.

When I returned I discovered the human / duck porno scene did not go full-out L.A. and was tasteful, at least as tasteful as it can be when a human gets hot for a duck.

Honorable mention for the shot of Lea Thompson's exceptionally well-formed backside which rose to much greater prominence in this movie than it ever did as Michael J. Fox's mother.

Thompson actually gives a fairly credible performance and she's highly-endearing.  Howard seems an honest duck, just one who wound up on another planet, so that gave us the Movie Relationship and it's charming.


Weirdness abounds as Jeffrey Jones and Tim Robbins were co-stars in possibly the most ridiculous roles of their lives.  Happily, Tim Robbins found better ones in other movies later but Jeffrey Jones seemed doomed to these ones and another example is when he was the principle in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."  Who knows, maybe he digs playing those types of gigs and he never wanted to be a secret agent 007 or some such.


"Howard the Duck" doesn't have the surreal absurdity we love in Terry Gilliam's work but it still comes off with a twisted kind of cool and I will probably watch it again just to behold the weirdness.  We crave it in a world which has become so mainstream, it's pushing Wonder Bread as an art form.

The big sell for the movie is in Howard's role since his speech is smart, dry, and unexpected.  Howard is smarter than just about everyone he meets so his reactions are constantly unusual.  Of course he was smarter ... he landed in Ohio (i.e. same state which locked it for Clinton and won't be forgiven for it).


The capper was the song, "Howard the Duck," and it was performed by Lea Thompson with her estimable L.A. pop / punk band.  That tune actually turned out medium cool.  The song was not on YouTube but here's the trailer:

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