Rating: Summary: A Hollywood version of the book;however the characters match Review: As with most movies the media must express the ideas in a shorter version than the book. Yet they could not have found a better actor to charater match. The movie is a little campy for this black commedy. END
Rating: Summary: Strange Review: Awfully strange flick. I have seen this a few times, and it's still hard to tell who's side Roddy McDowall's character is on. He is causing mayhem because he really loves Tuesday Weld's character, or is he furthering his own interests? You be the judge. First, you have to suspend belief and accept McDowall playing a teenager. Watch for the obvious screen gaffe where a boom mike can be plainly seen.
Rating: Summary: Strange Review: Awfully strange flick. I have seen this a few times, and it's still hard to tell who's side Roddy McDowall's character is on. He is causing mayhem because he really loves Tuesday Weld's character, or is he furthering his own interests? You be the judge. First, you have to suspend belief and accept McDowall playing a teenager. Watch for the obvious screen gaffe where a boom mike can be plainly seen.
Rating: Summary: Lord Love A Boom Mike Review: First time I saw this I could hardly believe the many, many visible boom mikes throughout the film. Loved the picture regardless, and now I've come to accept those boom mikes as characters as central to LORD LOVE A DUCK's frazzled beauty as Roddy McDowall & Tuesday Weld, its stars. Most knowledgeable film fans hold 70s films in reverence for their embracing of a deeper, richer reality more inspired by novels than by prior Hollywood films. 60s cinema tends to suffer by comparison: it often seems like a clumsy standoff between the death-throes of the old studios and their formulas, and the insisting beating on the door of a new, artistic, more experimental aesthetic: DUCK is one of those, subverting the soundstage-bound Mickey & Judy cliches by emulating that shot-on-indoor-sets look, with the vital modification of peopling this familiar artifical environment with the hyperAmerican grotesques who routinely populate Geo Axelrod's universe. Thus, like a lot of the best 60s movies, DUCK is part-fish, part-fowl and suffused with an atmosphere of strangeness beyond its subject matter - yet, given how Real Life in that decade similarly swayed on unsteady footing in two seperate realities, it works beautifully. And it definitely doesn't hurt that Tuesday Weld is a goddess of apple-cheeked carnality and conspicuous consumption. She may not be Everywoman exactly, but she IS Everywoman who ever dreamed of marrying Elvis, and that's good enough - like the King, you can't help falling in love with her. As has been noted, the 'cashmere sweater' scene is among the most erotic ever caught on film - unnervingly so, given she's playing the scene with, and for, her father. The movie is chockfull of scenes that similarly push black humor and social satire past the threshold of good taste or story logic; you're either going to go with it, or reject it altogether. I recommend the former: like a lot of underrated and outright ignored 60s movies that don't comfortably fit into any standard category, LORD LOVE A DUCK rewards the viewer who's willing to suspend disbelief for an hour-and-a-half with a totally absorbing and unique unreality all its own. It's a buzz you can only get from an American film made between JFK's fall and the rise of Tricky Dick, and it's a hoot besides.
Rating: Summary: Down on your Luck-O? Stuck in the Muck-O!! Review: Great Movie.. very ahead of its time. Too bad that TIME has long passed. I watched that movie not to long ago. It is still a great watch. (especially if you like Roddy McDowell and a young Tuesday Weld)This would make a neat remake using todays kids sensibilities. GENE
Rating: Summary: Great Movie Review: Great Movie.. very ahead of its time. Too bad that TIME has long passed. I watched that movie not to long ago. It is still a great watch. (especially if you like Roddy McDowell and a young Tuesday Weld) This would make a neat remake using todays kids sensibilities. GENE
Rating: Summary: An Odd Little Movie Review: I really don't know what to make of this movie. It seems like an allegory of changing events that were occurring exponentially during that fragile time smack in the middle of the decade of the 1960s. Being photographed black & white it has a feel of some of those high school teenage movies made during the 1950s. However we see many influences from the year it was released in 1966. For instance we see teenage girls clad in bikinis on a beach behind the film's credits. The film also suggests that it may actually be taking place in the near future by some of the set designs found in the high school and in a scene where Roddy McDowall is being psychoanalyzed by a female psychiatrist. Overall the film has a strange feel to it. Even the score by Neal Hefti was not typical of the work he was doing in the 60s. Hefti's score seems to be making some comment on society norms in general, specifically that they shouldn't be taken too seriously. This directly reflects Roddy McDowall's sentiments. And that's where this movie is so odd. Is it a comedy, a parody or is it trying to make some series statement on where we were headed as a country? This movie almost has a "Twilight Zone" feel about it. Tuesday Weld's character seems like she's going to languish in mediocrity. Roddy McDowall seems bent on changing here course for loftier pursuits. McDowall initially seem benevolent. As the movie unfolds McDowall becomes displeased with Tuesday Weld's love interest and he seems bent on undermining here. After a while you begin to wonder if the McDowall character is a figment of the audience's imagination. Or even more challenging is the possibility that the entire story is taking place in the mind of McDowall. For an odd little quirky film it is somewhat disturbing because it is just so unclear what the message of this film is.
Rating: Summary: About those boom mikes... Review: I suspect that the film may have been intended to be originally shown in a theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1 or 1.85:1, but was shot in 4/3 (1.33:1) and matted to the theatrical aspect ratio. When matted, the boom mikes would not be visible, but for the video release, instead of blowing up the widescreen picture to full screen, they may have just removed the mattes at the top and bottom, which would reveal the previously concealed boom mikes.
Rating: Summary: The Funniest Movie You've Never Seen Review: If you haven't seen "Duck", you have no idea what a treat you've missed. This way-ahead-of-its-time, outrageous black comedy has held up amazingly well, despite it being made 35 years ago. Tuesday Weld (in what is arguably her best performance) plays an "Everygirl" with a somewhat mercenary edge, Roddy McDowell plays her best friend who will do anything to please her-ANYTHING. The action centers around Consolidated High School in Los Angeles, a school so "progressive" botany is called "Plant Skills"; and where the only way Tuesday Weld can be accepted by the popular girls is by joining something called the "Cashmere Sweater Club" The movie skewers the youth culture, Southern California, sexuality, teen romance, public education, so effectively and hilariously you would think it was made yesterday. My favorite line: "Honey, in this family, we don't divorce our men, we bury them".
Rating: Summary: The Funniest Movie You've Never Seen Review: If you haven't seen "Duck", you have no idea what a treat you've missed. This way-ahead-of-its-time, outrageous black comedy has held up amazingly well, despite it being made 35 years ago. Tuesday Weld (in what is arguably her best performance) plays an "Everygirl" with a somewhat mercenary edge, Roddy McDowell plays her best friend who will do anything to please her-ANYTHING. The action centers around Consolidated High School in Los Angeles, a school so "progressive" botany is called "Plant Skills"; and where the only way Tuesday Weld can be accepted by the popular girls is by joining something called the "Cashmere Sweater Club" The movie skewers the youth culture, Southern California, sexuality, teen romance, public education, so effectively and hilariously you would think it was made yesterday. My favorite line: "Honey, in this family, we don't divorce our men, we bury them".
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