The Million Dollar Duck

It is fashionable to rag and bash this movie. The points are understood. Take 1930's cornball humor, mix in the physical comedy of the Stooges and Keystone Cops, with the backdrop of a story from Antiquity, the goose who laid the golden eggs. Place it in modernity, being more the generic mid 20th Century with a lawyer and US Treasury folks. It's 1971, but the movie appears to ignore the changing outside world. The 'far out dudes' Wadlo boys give a wink to the Hippy Era, but not much else. It's small town California, a point which is made deliberately, which ironically harkens back to then President Nixon's growing up. Gold and small towns, one only can imagine if any super seniors from rural America ever saw this at the time. Gold was no giver to prosperity in their eyes, Williams Jennings Bryan and 'free silver' were all the rage.

The movie suffers from terrible timing. A huge shift in taste was sweeping the country, as this is more in tune with the rural sitcoms of the late 60's, recently purged, and less with the new 'dramadies' of 'All in the Family' and 'MASH.' If you remember 'Get Smart,' you might forgive some of the 'cheese' here. The silly chase scene at the end, who does that in a movie ? Hummm, 'The French Connection' (picture of the year in 1971) ? This wasn't a hip time to be a young kid, I'm of the X'er generation. It wasn't like the late 50's/early 60's (Boomers) or the 90's (Millennials), time periods hailed for Disney creativity.

If you're reading this, you probably have some appreciation for the humanities...some history and motifs of literature. Let's look at this differently. First, the characters. Sandy Duncan as the flighty housewife sends the critics into orbit. 'All in the Family' used this characterization as satire, here and even in 1971, it's uncomfortable. Let's say that's just a misunderstood bit of humor and exaggeration. For wide acceptance...a miss, ok. Joe Flynn checks in with his staple uptight bureaucrat as the Treasury agent. Dean Jones, the 'everyman' father and family man. An image he would work with on other more successful Disney films. Tony Roberts launched his film career as his slippery lawyer, works well for even modern audiences. The rest of the cast is rounded out with some longtime Hollywood figures, mostly of the past.

Some imagery and motifs. Mrs. Dooley gets a phone call from the bank one morning, because she's 'overdrawn' on her checking account. A crusty old 'banker' threatens to call her husband. Charlie the duck...offers a deposit. At the teller window, a balding middle aged guy with a three piece suit. Not too far fetched for small town banking in the late 60's, circa 1970. Not that unlike the experience of their parents in the 40's. Those old guys probably cut the Dooley's mortgage years ago. Fast forward thirty years later ? ATM's, online banking, mortgages cut from online services, tellers 20-something ladies with a blouse from Target and if you ask an officer at the bank too many questions besides hours and building address, they'll reach for the phone and call the 1-800 number. Later in the film, with the Feds ponder keeping the golden Charlie a secret, the first foreigner on the montage is French, notorious in the era for collecting US gold to settle trade debts. When the Dooleys and Fred arrange chase, the call Katie gets is on...a RED phone. Later, when the Feds are caught up in a traffic accident and announce to the crowd they're with the government, one patron says, 'Government ! No wonder you got everything all loused up !' A cynicism more fitting to the late 70's rather than on the heels of the 'go/go 60s'

Lastly the gold politics. We're in small town California here. Although McKinley's 'gold bugs' won California against Bryan 'free silver,' in 1896, gold was of the New York bankers and big city industrialists. Worker bees and farmers chose inflation supported 'free silver.' But, in 1971, the gold standard was on its deathbed. Mr. Nixon, who 'appears' in the movie, would take us off the gold standard entirely within a few years. So, own all the gold you want, as we go total fiat currency, a world none of the creators really lived through. The yellow sports car would never go for 7,995 dollars again.

And it turns out that a few years later two University of Michigan professors managed to create pure 24-karat gold in the laboratory in 2012, and in 2020 a group of Swiss scientists managed to create an incredibly light type of 18-karat gold, the gold losing its value. In 3, 2, 1... Very cute movie, the family trio, dad, mom and son are cute, the lawyer friend too, and the sustainable evildoers... Cute...

As a kid in the early seventies I remember clips from $1,000,000 duck being shown on Disney Time and Screen Test. I think it's a head nod to a certain bad tempered duck who made Disney more then $1,000,000. It's interesting to see Tony Roberts in something not directed by Woody Allen. I first saw it in full in the mid -seventies when the BBC showed it on Christmas Eve (that was the days when Disney was very grudging about their stuff being shown to anything other than a full cinema audience). A good film, a satire on greed and the American Dream.

This movie, also known by the alternative title "The $1,000,000 Duck", isn't clearly one of Disney's most solid films. It's not a great movie, but has its fun and originality.

The movie stars Dean Jones and Joe Flynn, both from "The Love Bug". The movie happens to be about an animal, but here's where its biggest originality is: it's not about a cat or a dog or other familiar animals in movies, but a duck! The duck is a cute and likable chap, but very strange. After wandering into a radiation lab, the duck becomes irradiated and many unusual things happen to it, such as to lay golden eggs. Before that, it was already a poor dumb duck.

Dean Jones portrays Professor Albert Dooley, the guy who takes the duck home to offer his son. His son becomes attached to the duck. But because of the whole golden eggs story, Albert Dooley becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming rich thanks to that, proving how people can get so easily greedy for money.

Then again, it's not a super movie, but has its moments, such as Dooley's giant car polluting the air like that and doing those engine noises when it stops (very much like Uncle Buck's car) and some moments with Joe Flynn. I also liked that nice and beautiful yellow sports car.

Almost at the end of the movie, there is a sequence that is all about a chase. The whole sequence is really nuts yet hilarious! While watching it, I couldn't help myself thinking «Damn, what a chase!».

Suitably entertaining.

'The Million Dollar Duck' follows very similar steps as a lot of Disney's wacky comedies from around this era, it that regard it isn't anything particularly noteworthy. The writing to set up the events of this film is poor, it's incredibly manufactured.

However, as with most of these sorta films, it does produce enjoyable moments. That's helped by the casting, which Disney pick masterfully the vast majority of the time. Dean Jones always elevates a production upward, even if his performance here isn't one of his best. Tony Roberts is decent as Fred, though none of the others do all that much; not even Joe Flynn (Finley).

Nothing out of this world, but a good enough watch nonetheless.