Watch Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century For Free

I wanted to but couldn't!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

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

. . . 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).

Chuck Jones' mediocre follow-up to his classic Duck Dodgers short from the '50s. This was originally part of the made-for-TV special Daffy Duck's Thanks-For-Giving . Given that it was made for television and that it was made decades after the classic Looney Tunes shorts, you can imagine that this is inferior stuff. Surprisingly, the animation is not terrible. Compared to a lot of other stuff from the same era, it's quite good. However, it's not the least bit funny. It's dialogue-heavy with no good gags. Mel Blanc does provide the voicework and that automatically makes this better than any of the Looney Tunes stuff that came out after he died. So, it's not as good as the original short it follows up on, but it is watchable. More forgiving fans will likely rate it higher. After all, it's still Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, and Mel Blanc. That's nothing to sneeze at.

"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.

Chuck Jones made his mark on the world of animation by ignoring current conventions and writing his own rule book. In his later work, however, perhaps in response to an audience that could no longer appreciate subtlety, he ignores the principles that made him the innovator he was. 'Return of the 24½th Century' featured a clumsy plot driven by stilted dialog. Dialog-driven cartoons figured high on his list of gripes about latter-day cartoons. He maintained that if you couldn't follow the action with the sound turned off, it wasn't a real cartoon. By that standard, this isn't.