Howard the Duck (1986)
Directed by Willard Huyck
A scientific experiment unknowingly brings extraterrestrial life forms to the Earth through a laser beam. First is the cigar-smoking drake, Howard, from the duck's planet. A few kids try to keep him from the greedy scientists and help him back to his planet, but then a much less friendly being arrives through the beam...
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What critics compared Howard the Duck to
The George Lucas-produced, Willard Huyck-directed Howard the Duck from 1986, that’s what, and it feels like more people are realizing this with each passing day.
In the summer of 1986, George Lucas withheld images from his forthcoming movie, Howard the Duck, which built up breathless anticipation over just how the feathered hero was going to look.
In response, the producer decides to green-light the project, saying that it’s intended to be the second coming of “Howard the Duck”—in order to sabotage his boss.
Even if you might think that sitting through "Movie 43" would be an adventure along the lines of experiencing " Showgirls " or "Howard the Duck," you'll be filled with regret five minutes into this atrocity.
Well, if you mashed-up the worst parts of the infamous “Howard the Duck,’’ “Gigli,’’ “Ishtar’’ and every other awful movie I’ve seen since I started reviewing professionally in 1981, it wouldn’t begin to approach the sheer soul-sucking badness of the cringe-inducing “Movie 43,’’ which has been dumped on an unsuspecting public without advance press screenings.
Pitched as a wild antidote to the straightforward heroics of its corporate brethren, this low-level DC title, based on the premise of a group of imprisoned super villains put together as part of a top secret government program in which they would save the world in exchange for reduced prison sentences, was arguably the biggest fuckup of such a potentially interesting comic book-inspired idea since the infamous “Howard the Duck”—it was far too stupid, ugly and hateful to work as the mass-market blockbuster it was promoted as, way too restrained, timid and bloodless to succeed as the edgy anti-blockbuster that it presumably wanted to be and was little more than a haphazard assemblage of messy set pieces that were sometimes briefly enlivened by Margot Robbie’s inspired turn as the kooky-crazy Harley Quinn (a role she would find a better vehicle for in “Birds of Prey” (2020)) and dragged down to Mariana Trench-like depths during the blessedly brief moments when Jared Leto wandered on to deliver his a…
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Now, with the release of Mortal Engines, he has his own Howard The Duck.
But the nihilistic “Suicide Squad” is also the dumbest of all the movies spawned by comics since “Howard the Duck.”
Think of Lucasfilm’s production of “Howard the Duck.”
The recently formed Marvel Studios has successfully developed a risky new approach, churning out individual superhero films that kickstart their own series of sequels and act as prequels for a separate omnibus superhero series (Marvel has come a long way from their economically disastrous and aesthetically embarrassing forays into movie-making in the 1980s and early ’90s, which resulted in duds like the George Lucas-produced Howard the Duck, a forgettable low-budget Captain America starring Matt Salinger, and a junky Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four).
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If anyone other than Cameron were behind the camera, the film would probably be a disaster of Howard the Duck proportions.
The sad truth is that "Eyes Wide Shut" must enter that collection of over-inflated zeppelins full of hot air but otherwise rudderless and hopelessly adrift, like "Howard the Duck," "Ishtar" and "The Flintstones."