Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century (1980)

Did you people see the same film I saw?

An Exercise In Nonsense

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes, Hanna and Barbera and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons. Actually appreciate it even more now through young adult eyes, thanks to broader knowledge and taste and more interest in animation styles and various studios and directors.Chuck Jones deserved, and still deserves, to be considered one of the best, most legendary and most influential animation directors/animators. While not quite as distinctive in directing style as other directors from the same era, in his prime era he was responsible for some of the best cartoons ever made. Michael Maltese was a fine writer with lots of razor sharp wit, Daffy Duck is one of my favourite characters in animation and ever and Mel Blanc was one of the greatest voice actors ever. On top of being somewhat of a follow up to the masterpiece 'Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century', all of those ingredients made the potential of 'Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century' despite the 80s Looney Tunes specials/cartoons not being exactly amazing. Potential that was nowhere near lived up to. Not terrible, not close to being great either. There is none of the imagination, fun or wit of 'Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century' and it all feels tired and uninspired. Certainly there are good things. The animation has brightness and colour with some inventive moments, if not always refinement with some of the drawing scrappy. The music is lively enough and doesn't sound too cheap.Daffy is always worth watching, and that's an understatement, and he is still interesting and not out of character. A few amusing lines of dialogue and Mel Blanc shows that he has definitely not lost it. However, there is nothing new here and not much is amusing let alone funny, nothing is imaginative either. The gags feel stale and the timing has very little energy, fatigue is all over here. Marvin is bland, his personality being lost behind less than great material (weak actually) for him and so is the conflict and Porky is pretty useless. He is great usually playing it straight against the more interesting character of Daffy but he has nothing to do here. Some drawing is scrappy and the whole cartoon is far too talky with nowhere near enough gags, with too much of the dialogue being nothing to write home enough this is a big problem. Overall, not terrible but not much great here, Blanc's voice work and Daffy are the best assets. 5/10 Bethany Cox

. . . as well as the lame "bridging sequences" with which the Warner Bros. cartoon editors try to connect them, DUCK DODGERS AND THE RETURN OF THE 24 1/2th CENTURY is the only new part of the 24-minute 1980 television special, DAFFY DUCK'S THANKS-FOR-GIVING. Those who've already seen all of the Classic Looney Tunes of the 1940s and 1950s may want to fast-forward THANKS-FOR-GIVING to 14:17, where the 8-minute, 19-second DUCK DODGERS sequel begins. Or not. Since the original writer and director of DUCK DODGERS have a hand in this 27-years-in-coming follow-up (albeit on an obviously shoestring budget), along with some of the now (or then) geriatric Classic Era animators, this DUCK DODGERS is light years ahead of something like THE GREEN LOONTERN of 2003. That isn't saying much, as the artwork on the latter was farmed out to the losers of an American war, as some sort of Goodwill Project (and by that, I'm referring to the company which puts out those metal collection bins for your old clothes in strip mall parking lots--NOT to our deplorable White House Resident Elect's Goodwill Patty-Cake Games with the newly installed U.S. Czar, Vlad "Mad Dog" Putin, a seventh cousin thrice removed of the infamous Russian RasPutin).

"Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2 Century" isn't really terrible, but I don't understand why they thought that the original needed a sequel. Whereas the original was clever every step of the way - namely the conveniently alphabetical planets - there's just too much dialog here, something that director Chuck Jones didn't like. The main salvation is that Mel Blanc is still providing the voices (without him, the current stuff is basically worth nothing).But overall, this cartoon doesn't add anything new. The near consensus that sequels suck should also apply to cartoons. Daffy, Porky and Marvin didn't deserve to get used like this.

In honor of the 34th anniversary of, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", I bring forth a comment on Duck Dodgers. Daffy matches wits (?) with both Marvin the Martian and Gossamer and is found largely wanting. Porky virtually steals the show, but the best line is actually Daffy's. While fleeing as only Daffy can flee from certain dismemberment (as well as duck feathers flying everywhere) at the paws of Gossamer (the large, hairy and very orange monster), Daffy comes upon Porky and first tries to bribe him with a meagre promotion and then, in the true fashion of cowards everywhere, declaims, "Back, underling! How can I be a craven, crawling, cowardly poltroon with you in the way?As a past President (three times running-they caught me each time) of the Cowards Guild, that line fair brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it issue forth from his yellow beak (either that, or I have a rock in my shoe-I can never tell which) but I digress. Not the best ever done, but I like it well enough. Well worth watching. Recommended.