HOWARD THE DUCK

title: HOWARD THE DUCK

year: 1986

cast: Leah Thompson, Tim Robbins, Jeffrey Jones

rating: *

Okay, so, the first part isn't that great... it isn't even good... but it's watchable, somehow: so bad it's good as Howard the Duck is thrust from his planet onto ours. Meets a beautiful rock star and then things go downhill as they find a professor, Tim Robbins, who calls in an important scientist, Jefferey Jones. Jones is possessed by an evil alien and tears apart a diner in one of the unnecessarily longest scenes in history. The movie — based on the Marvel comic books that were a lot more risque and humorous — takes too much time centering on an actual plot: the evil scientist trying to kill the cigar chomping duck. An addictive element of the comic is that it didn't center on one particular tale but instead went berserk with various zany, wonderfully stupid adventures. But this disaster dwells too much on one element — that's very boring.

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI

title: THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION
year: 1984
cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow
rating: ***

Some movies are so bad they're good. Others are so strange they're interesting. This is the latter. So much happens, and with such originality and outrageousness, that's it's tough not to at least enjoy Buckaroo. It centers on a doctor in the future who has found a way of travelling through a mountain, thus entering the 8th dimension. Aliens find out about this and want him to save their race; other aliens find out and want to kill him. Buckaroo's band (literally a music group) consisting of strangely dressed men playing really bad music, have to save the day... while escaping the bad guys. The music is so bad it's funny, but most of Banzai centers on action and it's done quite well. It won't bore you. But alas, at a certain point, villain John Lithgow chews so much scenery there's hardly anything left for the rest of the eclectic cast.