I mean the movie, not the comic. Anyway, Nathan Rabin at the Onion’s AV Club sure does:
Howard The Duck begins by introducing its eponymous hero in his own world. Against a backdrop of smoky jazz, the camera moves deliberately around Howard’s apartment, lingering on a posters advertising “Mae Nest” and “W.C. Fowl” in “My Little Chickadee,” “Breeders of The Lost Stork.” as well as magazines like Rolling Egg” and Playduck. A mere three minutes into being introduced to Howard The Duck’s comic-book universe, I was already hankering for a way out. See, Howard’s totally a three-foot-tall wisecracking duck who acts just like a person! He thinks he’s Rory Calhoun or something. That’s joke number one: the artless juxtaposition of man and duck-kind. Over the course of the next 112 interminable minutes, I waited patiently for joke number two. It never arrived.
Be sure to check out the comments section at the bottom, where Rabin inquires about the quality of the source material.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I think he’s a little too hard on the film- Jeffrey Jones’ performance was inspired- but yeah, it’s still pretty average.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Average? Dan Coyle, you are a crazy person. It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen Bicentennial Man.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I think you guys are all stupid. This movie fucking ruled.
December 20th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
My parents took me to see that when I was a kid. Years later, you can still mention it to my mother and she’ll say, “I can’t believe we paid money to see that.”
December 20th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I agree with Dan, yet I empathize deeply with JEM, because he sat through Bicentennial Man.
December 20th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I saw it in a theater at a Hawaiian resort where we were doing the family vacation thang, and everyone (including me) was actually cracking up.
I later recommended it as a rental, sat down with the folks to watch it…and halfway through it admitted “You know, this seemed funnier in the theater”.
Yes, apparently EVERYTHING is funnier/better when you’re in Hawaii….
December 20th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Parker: Yeah, I think I ran screaming from Bicentennial Man the moment I saw Sam Neill in 80 year old guy makeup. And realized Embeth Daviditz was more robotic than Robin Williams!
December 21st, 2007 at 2:51 am
Anyone who didn’t know beforehand that Bicentennial Man was going to be totally without any redeeming virtue is a complete idiot, for two reasons:
1. Isaac Asimov story + any sort of warm, fuzzy, sentimentally humane and life-affirming message = YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.
2. Robin Williams + any sort of warm, fuzzy, sentimentally humane and life-affirming message = DO NOT WANT.
It’s like being mystified at how you could create a shitty movie by combining Will Smith in I, Robot with Patch Adams.
December 21st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I saw it because it was in a pile of videos a neighbor lent me. It was worse than life-affirming, it ended up being Robin Williams lecturing us all on the rights of artificial life. But it did give us the standard so we can say a thing is “Bicentennial Man Bad,” so there’s that.