Making satires about Southern California ethos is like launching a beach ball into the Pacific, or better yet, tripping Michael Dunn. This has always been true. Also true is the Latin saying, "Degustibus non disputatum est" which is to say that some of the most fiendishly aggressive egs. of California comedy, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, THE LOVED ONE (not the book which is comic genius but definitely the wretched movie) and THE LONG GOODBYE (Altman's overrated film is an intentional parody of Chandler) are not funny at all, whereas the old Frank Gilroy-Gene Barry TV show, BURKE'S LAW, James Garner's classic P.I. program, THE ROCKFORD FILES and this wild George Axelrod cult item are. There's no accounting for what some of us find (or do not find) laugh-worthy, but to expand upon the insightful comments already made regarding the picture's deliberately intrusive style - beginning with opening credits of crew shooting scenes that turn up later, visible boom mikes, and subliminal flash cuts of Tuesday Weld's eventual fate as Hollywood starlet - there is something affectionately complicitous about these choices. They provide the film with the degree of innocent unpredictability and silliness to protect it from the charge of pretentiousness. The same goes for the infectiously inane, repetitive theme song. (It's only with the final speech - similar to the one delivered by Sinatra which concludes THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE - that Axelrod turns pooh-faced on his audience.)
It's tone is deadly and not serious at the same-time, a paradox which fits the depraved atmosphere aptly. Everything that transpires in LORD LOVE A DUCK is substitute behavior for making whoopee, whether it be eating, drinking, dancing, driving, attempting murder, talking spiritualistic rot and/or simply "sampling" sweaters.
All Hollywood self-send-ups have odd-ball casts. But the ensemble of McDowell, Weld, Albright, Korman, West, Showalter and Ruth Gordon et. al. is the wackiest still on record because they're all gifted second-echelon performers who, quite plausibly, might have been touchy neighbors in real life at the time the movie was being made. They possess an incongruously intimate chemistry in this zany environment.
One other point of interest. Only two yrs. later, the adorable Miss Weld was to play a toxic destroyer again, this time in a movie written by Lorenzo Semple called PRETTY POISON. In it, she plays opposite Tony Perkins; the rapport between them is a little different, but Perkins, like McDowell, falls in love with her too. The result is once again devastating - as a matter of fact for the Perkins character it is far worse. PRETTY POISON is a darker, subtler, more compact, easier to defend picture than the Dobie Gillis on acid antics of LORD LOVE A DUCK, but in terms of knowing how to make best use of Tuesday, Axelrod got there first.
Was this review useful to you?
It's tone is deadly and not serious at the same-time, a paradox which fits the depraved atmosphere aptly. Everything that transpires in LORD LOVE A DUCK is substitute behavior for making whoopee, whether it be eating, drinking, dancing, driving, attempting murder, talking spiritualistic rot and/or simply "sampling" sweaters.
All Hollywood self-send-ups have odd-ball casts. But the ensemble of McDowell, Weld, Albright, Korman, West, Showalter and Ruth Gordon et. al. is the wackiest still on record because they're all gifted second-echelon performers who, quite plausibly, might have been touchy neighbors in real life at the time the movie was being made. They possess an incongruously intimate chemistry in this zany environment.
One other point of interest. Only two yrs. later, the adorable Miss Weld was to play a toxic destroyer again, this time in a movie written by Lorenzo Semple called PRETTY POISON. In it, she plays opposite Tony Perkins; the rapport between them is a little different, but Perkins, like McDowell, falls in love with her too. The result is once again devastating - as a matter of fact for the Perkins character it is far worse. PRETTY POISON is a darker, subtler, more compact, easier to defend picture than the Dobie Gillis on acid antics of LORD LOVE A DUCK, but in terms of knowing how to make best use of Tuesday, Axelrod got there first.
Was this review useful to you?