Movie Review: Howard the Duck (1986)
★☆☆☆☆
By the time Howard the Duck hit theaters in 1986, comic books were still treated as a novelty, something for kids, something you grew out of. But Howard had never been that kind of comic. Created by writer Steve Gerber in the mid-1970s, Howard the Duck was sharp, strange, and defiantly subversive. Gerber used Howard’s absurd situation, a talking duck trapped in a human world, to satirize American life with humor that was dark, surreal, and often profound. It was a cult hit, the kind of comic that spoke to readers who wanted something smarter and stranger than capes and catchphrases.
The movie did not understand that. It wanted Howard to be everything at once: a wisecracking cartoon for children, a sleazy comedy for adults, a sci-fi adventure, a romance. What came out of that confusion was something that never found its footing. It was too weird for kids, too childish for adults, and too lost for anyone who loved the comic.
The story begins with a duck ripped from another dimension and transported to Cleveland. There is promise in that absurdity. But it all quickly collapses into noise: slapstick fights, awkward sexual tension, and unimpressive special effects.
Lea Thompson does her best. She acts with sincerity against the chaos, treating Howard as a real creature, not a punchline. But then comes the scene where she very nearly has sex with a duck. It is meant to be funny, maybe daring, but it is just unsettling. That scene sums up the whole movie, a tone no one can explain and no audience that fits it.
Howard himself, brought to life with clunky animatronics and sarcasm that rarely lands, feels trapped. Not just in another world, but in a film that does not know what to do with him. The jokes fall flat. The action drags. Even the climactic battle feels like a parody of excitement, all sparks and no soul.
Howard the Duck is remembered now mostly as a punchline, but watching it again, there is something sad about it. You can sense the effort, the money, the ambition. But none of it connects. It is a movie at war with itself, a studio film trying to be punk, a children’s fantasy riddled with adult confusion.
In the end, Howard the Duck is not just a bad movie. It is a lost one. It tried to translate cynicism into spectacle and ended up with neither. Weirdness without wit. Satire without bite. For a comic born to skewer the absurd, that might be the cruelest irony of all.
1 comment
One of the greatest comic book characters ever created