Superior Duck

I must be the only one who didn't like this. I saw this as part of Boomerang's Looney Tunes block and was excited at the prospect of a Chuck Jones I hadn't seen before. This very late cartoon from him though is full of painfully stale bits lifted from earlier cartoons.

The plot is purportedly about Daffy as a superhero, but it quickly derails into "Duck Amuck" territory. It feels like a sloppy effort here, with pretty much every other Looney Toon other than Bugs making a gratuitous cameo.

A never-before-seen Looney Tunes short is always something of a treat, but I was disappointed in this one. I still rate it a 4 out of 10 for even existing.

There's not much substance in the writing, although it does manage to capture the old late 50s, early 60s Looney Tunes style well. After all, Chuck Jones did direct it. However, the short feels very phony, feeling the need for cameos and the reuse of old story pieces and gags. Even something for Looney Tunes, this cartoon doesn't make sense. If only all of the cameos were taken out and it was a sequel to Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century, it would've been better. In the end, it's a bit torturous to watch but will not leave much of an impact at all.

This cartoon is fantastic. Featuring verbal jokes mainly, like the narrator's hysterical goofs. With cameo appearances from nearly every Looney Tunes character, even Wile E. Coyote! Porky returns as the ever-faithful Space Cadet, and Daffy seems to have dumped his old disintegration-proof vest. He doesn't have much luck with the new one either. It has two main focuses: one on a single character amid a forest of cameos and determinedly trying to succeed; the second on the unlucky and quite dim superhero. The animation is brilliant--Chuck Jones manages to create the same effect with all-new animators. With the theme of the fall-guy superhero desperately trying to make do in a cruel world, few beat the hilarious story of Superior Duck.

Lame later effort from Chuck Jones that doesn't provide a single laugh. The "joke" is that Daffy is a superhero in some futuristic sci-fi city but he can't even get through his introduction without arguing with the narrator. It calls back to classic Daffy cartoons like Stupor Duck, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, and Duck Amuck. You'd be better served going back and watching those shorts instead of this dud. The music is loud and annoying as is often the case with later Looney Tunes cartoons. The animation is colorful but flat and unimpressive. Frank Gorshin does the voice of Daffy and Foghorn Leghorn (one of the many characters thrown in for no purpose other than Jones looking for a cheap nostalgia 'pop'). His Daffy is okay but his Foghorn is terrible. Tony the Tiger himself, Thurl Ravenscroft, is the narrator. It's a complete failure of a cartoon that has only one noteworthy bit: the Superman cameo at the end.

To begin with it saddens me that Chuck Jones died before he got to create more great cartoons. This is a funny cartoon that involves Daffy Duck in a recurring time for the cartoon. The tape is a compilation of many Daffy Duck hits such as: Stupor Salesman, Golden Yeggs, Naked Stork, Design for Leaving, and Show Biz Bugs, but this new cartoon entitled "Superior Duck" is just as good as all the old ones. It's a bit random, which makes it funny. Some funny recurring jokes within the cartoon are all the "saying mistakes", such as "Superior Duck able to leap tall locomotives..." "Superior Duck, faster than a speeding building..." More things that make this a great film is all the akwardness and use of the "Looney Tune" characters. They are somehow able to fit all the "Looney Tune" characters when they are telling the "Description" of Superior Duck. All in all this is a good movie that deserves to be watched by cartoon lovers young and old. I highly recommend it.