Everything's Ducky

Silly. Silly. Silly. Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett are Navy men John Paul Jones (remember your history) and Beetle McKay, stationed somewhere in the desert - looks like Palm Springs to me. Alvy Moore (was the absent minded Hank Kimball on Green Acres) plays Jim Lipscott. Jackie Cooper, as in child actor Jackie Cooper from the oldies, is Lieutenant Parmell. Richard Deacon (Mel Cooley, from Dick Van Dyke Show) is the lab doctor Deckham. The sailors are sent to pick up a duck from a special military lab, and I can't say a whole lot more without giving away plot points.... It's all pretty silly, and I guess now we know why they don't show this very often. This appears to be the first Hollywood film that Don Taylor directed --all his earlier stuff was for TV; guess none of the more seasoned directors would touch it.... I'll just say they couldn't make this with a live duck today - PETA and SPCA would be all over them! Lets give this one a four... it would have been a three, but there are some familiar names in it who went on to be bigger (and better).

All right, so a whole lot of good performers are kind of wasted in Everything's Ducky. But the film isn't as bad as some would have it, in fact there are a few really amusing moments.

Right around this same time a talking horse was the center of a long running television series and maybe that was the problem with this film. What worked for the whimsical Mister Ed television show just did not work in a feature film where they were going for belly laughs instead of quiet chuckles.

Still as a team Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett work well together as a pair of goofball sailors who find a talking duck who was the pet project of a recently deceased scientist. Believe it or not, the duck has the secret to the needed rocket formula for our manned launch around the moon. But these two don't understand it. Like entrusting the formula to Abbott&Costello.

Stanley Kramer must have noticed that Rooney and Hackett did have good chemistry as a team because he used them as an act in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World the following year.

Everything's Ducky is not the greatest comedy film in the world, but it does have a few laughs and Rooney and Hackett made a great team.

I turned on this comedy, not expecting much. It looked like the sort of meaningless unfunny 'family' comedies that Disney specialized in during the late 1960s. But the sure comic timing of Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett won me over immediately: and the absurdity of the situation -- two sailors on a submarine in the middle of the desert, told off to deliver a talking duck is carried through surefootedly. True, it is cheaply shot and timed to look more like one of those fantasy-comedies that populated TV during the 1960s -- Mr. Ed, I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters -- but there is something about its attitude towards the government, with its idiotic bureaucratic navy that speaks to 1960s dissatisfaction and rebellion than all of Jack Nicholson's performances.

It's not a great movie by any means, but a very amusing time-waster, with some great parts for old timers like former child actor Jackie Cooper and ex-Charlie Chan Roland Winter.

This was a favorite of mine growing up. I watched many times whenever it cropped up on a local TV station, and even went to see it when a local church showed it one Saturday morning. It's plot is about two misfit sailors (Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett) who become friends with a talking Duck named Scuttlebutt. The duck was a favorite of a brilliant scientist, he decided to speak just like his scientist friend. Now the Navy after the scientist's death need to find a formula the late scientist had developed and realize that the duck might have the formula in his brain and want to kill him to read his brain. So our two sailor heroes try to save Scuttlebutt from that fate.

Yes, it is as silly as it sounds, but the actors and direction by Don Taylor actually make it somewhat believable. There is a wonderful scene with Rooney alone on a park bench, where two other sailors and their girls are making out on each side of Rooney. Rooney plays the scene well and it's very funny. After watching it again today i can see why I loved it so much as a young boy, and it's still fun for me today. Don't expect a great movie here, but if you are a fan of Rooney's or Hackett's, they are in fine form and show the promise of a great comedic team, just like they did a few years later in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I wish that they actually made more films together. But as i said it is worth a look, especially if you have small children around.

In order to avoid the draft, Buddy Hackett (as Admiral John Paul Jones) and Mickey Rooney (as Kermit Beetle McKay) have joined the Navy. "Everything's Ducky" for the pair when they're assigned an easy mission; in "Operation Bird Brain", they are to set free a recently dead officer's duck. The sailors become attached to "Scuttlebutt", the duck who can talk. Mr. Hackett and Mr. Rooney take the duck out drinking, and become financially attached to Scuttlebutt. They try to save their feathered friend from Navy officers, who want to cut the bird's brain out.

Contrived lunacy as in the hands of Hackett and Rooney is criminal. This film is both unfunny and unpleasant. Despite Scuttlebutt's boasting he can handle a few martinis, the duck gets roaring drunk. The sight of the drunken, neck-wobbling duck is unsettling. It's also obvious filmmakers have put some irritant in the duck's mouth, in close-ups, to make it appear to be talking. The duck looks very uncomfortable.

Jackie Cooper (as Parmell) makes an impressive re-appearance on film, after a long absence; his appearance is mercifully short, considering the star-billing, and weakness of material. And, singer Joanie Sommers (as Nina) appears, without singing.

** Everything's Ducky (1961) Don Taylor ~ Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper