The top Lord Love a Duck quotes selected by the Rotten Tomatoes community. Login to submit a quote! I wouldn't be surprised if the choice of a duck over some other animal was nothing more than the phenomenon that a lot of people find ducks inherently funny, in much the same way that. Lord Love a Duck illustrates, with corrosive wit, how the mindless pursuit of status will be the death of us all. Lord Love a Duck is a sun-baked Faustian farce about Southern California teen, Barbara Ann Greene (Weld), one-time Head Cheerleader and most popular girl at Longfellow High School, now facing an uncertain future of. Synopsis, cast and crew, reviews, user comments and ratings, production and distribution information, quotations, and links. An exclamation of surprise. 1913 Ian Hay - The Writings of Ian Hay 'Lord love a duck!' he observed in a dazed voice — 'What's this?' 2000 Noreen Wald - Death Never Takes a. Definition of 'Lord love a duck' from our dictionary of English idioms and idiomatic expressions. Lord Love a Duck is a 1966 black comedy starring Roddy McDowall and Tuesday Weld. The film was a satire of popular culture at the time, its targets ranging from progressive education to beach party films. Buy Lord Love A Duck: Read 36 Movies & TV Reviews - Amazon.com. Roddy McDowell, Tuesday Weld, Harvey Korman and Ruth Gordon star in this deliciously offbeat comedy that satirizes. Not only does Axelrod turn out to be his own best director but his script for Lord Love a Duck is by far the best thing he has ever done. Tuesday Weld, Roddy Mc. Dowall, Lola Albright, Ruth Gordon, Martin West, Sarah Marshall, Max Showalter, Harvey Korman, Martin Gabel, and a bevy of blank bikini belles make up the funniest comic ensemble since the palmiest days of Preston Sturges. Comparisons have been made with Dr. Strangelove and Lolita and What's New, Pussycat? In fact, the cavernous guffaws tend to tear apart the flimsy fabric of Axelrod's satiric conception of sun- kissed Southern California, where even God has been converted to a drive- in. The characters and their jokes seem to transcend their contexts. For example, spoofs of psychoanalysis would seem to be automatically mirthless at this late date. Nevertheless Axelrod disproves Seneca's aphorism about there being nothing new under the couch by counterpointing a surly lady psychologist with Roddy Mc. Dowall's impishly innocent Rorschaeh reactor. From then- on, Axelrod consistently hits higher notes of hilarity than Kubrick- Nabokov, Kubrick- Sothern, Donner- Allen, Richardson- Sothern- Waugh, etc. Part of Axelrod's advantage is with actors. Tuesday Weld is Nabokov's grown- up nymphet come to life in a cavalcade of cashmere sweaters, and doser to Nabokov's original conception than Sue Lyon ever could be. More important than the casting is Axelrod's affectionate attitude toward this creature of inordinate pride and perversity. If the author identifies more with Roddy Mc. Dowall's superior intelligence and industriousness, he shares with his protagonist a longing for the natural grace and beauty of American Girlhood flowering amid the absurd vegetation of materialism and gadgetry. Yet Axelrod is, paradoxically, least effective when he attempts to be most serious about his feelings. Ultimately, Roddy Mc. Dowall makes too eccentric a spokesman for Axelrod's deeper sensibilities, and it is not always dear what mood the author is attempting to establish, particularly when Luscious Lola Albright is on the screen as Tuesday Weld's Stella Dallas mother updated to a barroom bunny past her prime, yet somehow indomitable, with that glint in her eyes and that catch in her voice and that bunny tail that sums up all the desperate gaiety of our time. Axelrod is not yet the compleat director. His Resnais flash- memory mannerisms of Last- Tuesday- in- Hollywood are pretentious and wearying, and there is not yet a steady flow or stable rhythm to his over- all direction. The parts are considerably superior to the whole! Also, the funny moments are all the funnier because of the admirably serious moments that do not come off successfully. Despite bursts of wild slapstick, Axelrod's direction is wisely calm and contemplative, so that his characters can generate some feeling. He is commendably patient and somewhat original with a sustained oblique two- shot in the touchingly tentative scenes between Roddy Mc. Dowall and Tuesday Weld. Some of the jokes are very broad, but Axelrod's execution of them is never tasteless. Spedal mention should be made of Martin West's all- American ass, a comic reincarnation of Boobus Americanus that would have warmed the heart of H. West's life force is a perfect complement to that of Weld's all- American girl, and they both seem destined to live pointlessly ever after until Axelrod- Mc. Dowall get the bright idea of testing the indestructibility of the male participant in the American Dream. Finally, even the act of murder is morally muddled by the insensate technology of our time. It has taken me a long time to come to grips with this film. I first considered palming it off with faint praise, but it has stuck in my mind despite all sorts of grave distractions, and I have decided that I am on Axelrod's side in this matter. I like the cast he assembled. I believe also that more writers should try directing their own material, particularly in the realm of comedy. Finally, bankers, studios, and producers would be better advised to recruit new directors from the ranks of writers rather than from the functionally illiterate graduates of so- called film academies.(Village Voice, March 1.
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