Family Film Reviews: Howard The Duck

One film that I can remember more than anything is that classic Howard the Duck, what can be said about this comedy adventure? Well for one it was an 80's film, born of that era of 80's music and sensibilities of that decade, certainly you can notice the dress sense, somethings wrong, but it fits that age well I think.

Howard sits in his arm chair and lights a cigar and starts to read his favourite play duck magazine, but then he is sucked from his life by an as yet unknown force still sitting on his arm chair and flying through other apartments and surprise surprise he lands on earth in Cleveland to a different world than he is used to.

Howard the duck is one of them films that was just memorable for me, it was funny and cool at the time, I remember although the style of the eighties is rather dated unless you live in a time warp and love all that retro stuff, it is I suppose what makes Howard the duck a great film as opposed for it to be coming out in todays audience at the cinema.

As I first saw this film at the cinema when my aunty took us to see it and she was roaring with laughter more than us, the film itself was filled with inuendo of the duck kind and a flash of duck titty at the beginning(nice!), but as a kid what I thought was cool and still do at the time is when the scientist bloke gets possessed by the dark overlord and starts blasting everything and everyone with his powers.

The plot was quite simple to find out why he came to earth and he does but to also save the universe from the dark overlords who have found out how to get to our world through a huge telescope that Howard arrived through from his home world.

Howard the duck was an original concept that first appeared in comic book form and it was from there that the film sort of happened, a mix of pop cultural references and one liners that are funny today, I bought this film again about 4 months ago because I just wanted to own this movie and let my kids watch and enjoy it like I did at their age.

What I find great about the film is that it is the opposite of the ET film, he's arrived to save the world by accident rather than arrived and needs to get home which at first he does want to get home, but at the end he can't. He has to save the world from the dark overlords and that's the last half of the film.

Howard the duck yeah! is a nice catchy tune that I can't get out of my head, but who wants to when this film is such a cult classic....

The Goonies was another classic movie of the 1980's and was also some form of amusement with the classic catchphrases that are loaded in that film and the classic kid characters that always stick in your mind.

Labyrinth was a fantasy musical film that is a family favorite also from the 80's era and is pretty much entwined within my own childhood. The classic David Bowie written for the movie songs are what makes this fantasy appealing as are the manu fantasy creatures such as the Goblins, Great film.