Let's Watch This: "Quackerz" (2016)

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the movieI am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

NOTE #3: If you like this movie, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.

You can find a lot of crap on Amazon Prime Video. No, really - if you take a look at their kids' movies section, you'll find a lot of really, really bad animated films. Lotta direct-to-video schlock. Among the films on there are Go Fish!, The Star, Khumba, Rock-a-Doodle, Top Cat: The Movie, and even The OogieLoves (remember THAT movie?). On the bright side, you can find Madagascar 3 on there too.

The good news is, all of this direct-to-video schlock makes for great reviewing material for my blog. Case in point, it is on Amazon Prime Video that you can watch Quackerz.

Weird thing is, the film's director, Viktor Lakisov, doesn't seem to have directed much else... he's mainly a visual effects supervisor. Oh, and one of the film's writers was also one of the writers of that Pauly Shore Pinocchio movie.

Is the film good? Well, uh... how do I put this? It's for the birds. Why do I say that? Well, for one thing, it's an obvious pun. But why else? Let's find out, shall we?

The movie starts off with two ducks in a cage. Say hello to Longway (voiced by Robbie Daymond, no stranger to voicing ducks) and Commander Duckmus (Michael Gross). Longway is trying to get them out of that cage with... a tablet. Yep, this is a 2010s movie all right...

"I told you to get the most recent version of the iPad! But NOOOOOOOOOOOO, 'this one should
work just fine', you said..."

So why are these two birds in a cage? To answer that question, the film takes us back three days earlier... it's revealed that Longway is the son of an emperor duck. Just in case you couldn't tell that this duck is supposed to be Asian, he has a stereotypical Asian guy mustache and goatee. And is voiced by Enn Reitel, a Scottish actor. This is making me uncomfortable.

On the bright side, they resisted the urge to call him "Pee King Duck" or something
corny like that...

Asian Stereotype Duck spews out exposition about how they're Mandarin Ducks, they don't fly, and how they don't NEED to fly because they've got everything they want on their island. First of all, this is what Mandarin Ducks look like...

Tell me, do ANY of the ducks we've seen in the screencaps so far look like that? They had the opportunity to make really unique-looking cartoon ducks and instead we just get these yellow bowling pin-shaped guys. Second, Mandarin Ducks actually DO fly. Of course, if we want to bring realism into this, Mandarin Ducks don't TALK like the ones in this movie do either, so I guess it's kind of a nitpick.

"I wanna see the world!" Longway complains. He wants adventure in the great, wide somewhere... he wants it more than he can tell...

His wings actually being just normal arms with feathers sticking out from under them
freaks me out.

After Longway leaves, Emperor Duck talks to his advisor (Joshua J. Greene) about why he doesn't want his son to learn to fly. You see, he's the Sun Duck, and there's some sort of prophecy about how the Sun Duck will one day sacrifice themselves to stop the forces of darkness from shrinking the sun down to the size of a pea. And as we've established in our review of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, extinguishing the sun would be bad. Sundial sales would plummet, for one thing.

In three days, it will be precisely one hundred years from the day that this was foretold, which means that the "Dark Messenger" will show up. Emperor Duck does not want his son to sacrifice himself, even though that's apparently the only thing stopping the "forces of darkness" from plunging the world into darkness. "It's all under control..." he claims. "I have the lanterns ready."

So, is there literally NO OTHER WAY to stop these "forces of darkness"? Why is Longway, who seemingly has no skills or character traits other than "plays a lot of video games", the only one who can save the day? Who wrote this prophecy anyhow?

Meanwhile, in a Chinese village...

I can't take my eyes off that neon yellow dog and cat. Everything else in this village has a
normal color scheme, it makes those two stick out like a sore thumb.

We get an unfunny scene with these two guys named Shina (Bruce Nozick) and Kianga (Jesse "Lefou" Corti) stealing buns from a baker and getting chased into a train tunnel which is supposedly abandoned but, oh wait, it's not abandoned after all. Stepping out of the approaching train is this lady.

This is our main villain, Ms. Knout (Alanna Ubach). She's looking for someone to take her to a condemned building. But enough about her, let's get back to the ducks.

Longway wants to learn how to fly. Unfortunately, there aren't any George Lopez-voiced toucans around to give him lessons (I know I already made that joke in my Holidaze review, but hey, if Garfield can recycle jokes, so can I), so he has to try and teach himself. Only problem is, he sucks at it. Then he sees these guys flying by...

"I don't know, but I've been told..."
"I DON'T KNOW, BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD..."
"Valiant is a much better movie!"
"VALIANT IS A MUCH BETTER MOVIE!"
"Wait, that doesn't rhyme."
"Shut up, Darryl..."

And among them is a guuuuuuuuuuuuurl duck who I'm sure is not supposed to be Longway's love interest.

Seriously, their wing-arms are freaking me out... couldn't you just give them regular wings?

Then "Who Let the Dogs Out" starts playing for some reason as the new ducks, led by Commander Duckmus from before, land. They think they're in Hawaii. The emperor duck shows up and tells them they're in China, but Duckmus doesn't believe him.

For those wondering, yes, the emperor duck does indeed have a name (if he didn't, I would've
told you so earlier). But eh, I'm just gonna call him "the emperor duck"...

"Our traditions oblige us to welcome all vagrant birds, especially the stupid and fat," the emperor duck says. But Duckmus winds up ticking him off, leading to the emperor duck attempting to go all Tae-Quack-Do on his tailfeathers.

"You gotta ask yourself... do I feel DUCKY? Well? Do ya, PUNK?"

After the fight, Emperor Duck runs off to "pump up the sun" (the sun is setting and he thinks he can push it down) and talks to the other Mandarin Ducks about how the new ducks are going to destroy all that is good on their island.

Then we cut back to the humans. Shina and Kianga try to steal gold from Ms. Knout's suitcase, but a police officer apprehends them, only for Ms. Knout to say that they're actually her pool boys. Why? Because she could use the thieves' help. And then the police officer starts beatboxing and rapping. Y'know, whenever I think this movie might not be as bad as I thought it would be, it throws something really cringe-worthy in my face.

After slamming the door on the police officer, Ms. Knout tells Tweedledee and Tweedledum that an extremely rare duck lives on an island. "Bring me this duck, and I will make you rich beyond your dreams," she claims.

"Uh, are you gonna tell us why you WANT this duck?"
"No. Just get it!"
"Okay..."

Meanwhile, Longway wants to fight the new ducks, but Emperor Duck is all "Nah, that's not necessary, go play your video games." So Longway heads back to his place. And then Duckmus' right-hand duck Duane (Robert D. Howard) throws the female duck from before in there as punishment for going AWOL earlier. This girl duck? Her name is Erica (Andrea Becker), she's Duckmus' daughter, and despite how clear he made it to Duane that he really didn't want to punish her and only agreed to it because he didn't want the other ducks to think he was soft, Duane tells her some crap about how he thinks his reputation is more important than his daughter.

So now that Erica and Longway are face to face, it's time for them to do some awkward getting to know each other as Longway shows her the secret way out of his room - through his toilet. Say, if Erica is Duckmus' daughter, how come she's clearly the same species of duck as Longway as opposed to a regular mallard like Duckmus? Is she adopted? Or maybe she's not the same species of duck as Longway and it's just the weird art style that's throwing me off.

Also, I'm just now realizing that Longway looks like a duck version of Sora from Kingdom Hearts. I've been racking my brain trying to think of who that hair reminds me of, and it JUST came to me. He looks like Sora!

I gotta give the filmmakers credit for casting a professional voice actor as Longway instead
of tossing the role over to some celebrity with a generic "pretty boy" voice (like with Bo from The Star).

Longway winds up angering Erica by saying insensitive things about her dad and her species. Then we see Dumb and Dumber in a boat, only for that police officer to show up and give chase again. This is another scene that's meant to be funny but isn't funny at all.

After getting away from the cop, Shina gets the idea to disguise a fish they caught as a duck and give it to Ms. Knout. Because she's not an idiot, it doesn't fool her. She tells them to get her that duck or else she will make them into cat food. Yeesh, that's a disturbing mental image... cat food made out of people? What would you even call it? "Soylent Meow Mix"?

The next morning, the Mandarin Ducks use rocks to spell out a message for the mallards: "GO HOME". This makes Duckmus MAD!

"Well, that just ruffles my feathers!"

Also making him MAD is that he sees Longway hanging out with Erica, leading him to believe that Emperor Duck sent him to be a spy and get military secrets from her. Emperor Duck isn't too keen on his son liking Erica either. Hoo boy, is this one of those Romeo and Juliet-inspired love stories? If Duckmus says "They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil!" at some point, I'm turning the movie off.

While Erica is teaching Longway how to fly, Skinny Thug and Fat Thug manage to drain the island's lake with dynamite (it makes sense in context), leading Longway to assume that when he landed in the lake his head made a hole big enough to drain it. Erica suggests they get the heck off the island and go see the world, but Longway says he shouldn't leave his dad when there's all this trouble with the mallards. Her response is to tell him to "quack off". Wow, how did a kids' movie get away with THAT?

The next morning, Duckmus (what kind of a name is that anyway? Is that supposed to be a pun?) discovers that the lake is empty when he tries to dive into it. "What the quack?!" he says, narrowly avoiding being shisk-ka-bobbed by the pointy stalagmites (does it qualify as a stalagmite if it's on the bottom of a lake?) inside. He assumes that the Emperor Duck somehow did this and declares was on him and his people.

Nice underpants, Emperor Duck.

In an attempt to stop the Mandarin Ducks and mallards from going to war, Longway tells his fellow Mandarin Ducks that it's his fault the lake was drained and that they shouldn't blame the mallards and how he's a loser who can't do anything right and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. As punishment, Emperor Duck forbids Longway from using his tablet. Horror of horrors. Duckmus shows up disguised as a Mandarin Duck (so is this considered the duck equivalent of blackface?) but Emperor Duck figures it out and kicks him into the empty stalagmite-filled lake. He winds up getting caught in Shina's net.

Duane isn't too upset about Duckmus being in danger - without Duckmus leading the mallards, HE can assume command. I knew there was something suspicious about that duck... Erica flies off to save her dad, and then this sun tattoo on Longway's chest starts glowing, revealing to everyone that he's the Sun Duck.

This is just a nitpick, but why is Longway wearing a belt when he doesn't have pants for it to hold up?

Longway calls out his dad for polluting the air with his filthy lies, then flies off to help Erica. Meanwhile, Shina and Kianga have second thoughts about giving Ms. Knout the duck because they figure out that it's the Sun Duck and that she might want it so she can block out the sun. So what do they do? They... give it to her anyway. Uh...

Okay, she immediately figures out upon seeing Duckmus that he's not the Sun Duck. Then Longway and Erica appear in the window, and when Mrs. Knout sees Longway she recognizes HIM as the Sun Duck, captures him, and throw him in the cage with Duckmus.

Back on the island of the Mandarin Ducks, Emperor Duck's advisor gives him a pep talk and then he decides they must help Longway. Then we cut back to the bad guys, who throw Duckmus and Longway's cage into a closet until it's time to kill the Sun Duck. This is where we came in, you'll recall. Hey, wait a minute! Emperor Duck confiscated Longway's tablet. Why does he have it back?!

Why did the movie start off with this scene again?

Fortunately, Erica sneaks through a window and tries to save them, but they insist that she should go get help. She does. Then Kianga opens the door, the cage spills out, and he starts playing basketball with it for some reason. Outside, Ms. Knout somehow manages to suck Shina into her luggage... which also has robotic Dr. Octopus-esque arms. What sorcery is this?!

As for Erica, she makes it back to the other mallards, but Duane has taken over as commander and has her thrown in "the slammer". Because the other mallards trust Duane over her, apparently.

In the words of another animated duck, he's despicable.

Duckmas narrowly manages to avoid getting his head chopped off by Kianga and manages to tie him up. Ms. Knout and her walking luggage carry Longway to the roof of the building, and then what looks like a satellite dish pops out of the luggage just as the sun comes up. Her plan, it would seem, is to suck up the sun's light, which will somehow allow her to live forever. Wasn't this Yzma's plan in the original version of The Emperor's New Groove? Destroy the sun so she wouldn't get old?

Actually, the villain's goal in Tangled was sorta similar, too, wasn't it? Harness the power of the sun to be young forever? So does that mean this movie plagiarized Tangled?

"I'll show those idiots at DirectTV that there are OTHER WAYS of getting high-quality television!"

Erica and the other mallards show up (I thought they listened to Duane over her... guess not) just as Duckmas is beating the crap out of Kianga. Emperor Duck and the Mandarin Ducks are flying in to rescue Longway, and one duck fires a toilet plunger at her. When she pulls it off, it's revealed that she was wearing a mask - she's actually really, really old and wrinkly!

Oh, wow! This would be a huge twist if it weren't for the fact that we already caught a glimpse
of her real face earlier in the movie.

Longway winds up in some sort of control room with a bunch of TV screens and technology. Erica tells her dad about how Longway is the Sun Duck, and how according to legend he's gonna save the world by sacrificing himself. Duckmas' response? "Well, that sounds like a win-win!"

Wow. That's just COLD.

Pictured: a massive tool.

Erica is all "If you really loved me, you'd save Longway!" to which Duckmus is all "Okay, I'll help." The mallards join the Mandarin Ducks' fight against Ms. Knout, who jumps into the luggage and into the room where Longway is. She pulls a lever which causes another robotic arm - this one much larger than the ones in the luggage - to emerge from the house. Then she puts on a helmet that bombards her with the rays stolen from the sun, making her younger. Longway finally gets out of the cage, and Erica destroys the satellite dish by throwing a helmet of Longway's which he claimed could read minds at it. And that causes the robotic arm to collapse too.

Now that the satellite dish is finito, Ms. Knout becomes all wrinkly again. "I HATE DUCKS!" she shouts, and then she pushes a button that causes guns to emerge from the house and start spraying green gas.

This is also what happens when you eat everything on the menu at Taco Bell.

Fortunately, the mallards have gas masks. The Mandarin Ducks try to hold off the beam that's sucking the sun's rays. Oh, and guess what? Ms. Knout also has a backup antennae. Jeez, this climax is long. Would they just defeat her already?

Okay, long story short, this happens. It is, without a doubt, the coolest part of the movie.

"OW! OOOOOOH! YEOW! OUCH! PAIN! I AM HURTING SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!"

"I AM THE SUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" Longway screams as he is blasted with the beam, which proceeds to pull him into the sun for some reason. Then it sets him aflame, filling the surrounding air with the smell of roast duck, and sends him hurtling back towards the building where Ms. Knout is, causing it to explode. This presumably kills Ms. Knout, but Longway, being the main character, survives.

The ducks fly home and then it's revealed that Ms. Knout actually survived. Okay, I call bull. How did she survive that explosion?

Heck, she doesn't even get a comeuppance. As the credits roll, we see Kianga and Shina flying around in a hot air balloon doing nothing funny whatsoever, the ducks have a party, and Longway and Erica fly off to Hawaii. So the moral of today's story is, you can attempt to DESTROY THE SUN and just get a slap on the wrist for it.

What's the Verdict?

What's the only thing worse than a movie that's really bad? A movie that's really BLAH. It's so hard to get joke material out of a movie that's really blah. Case in point, this.

It is not the worst animated movie I've ever seen, but I would not call it good in any sense of the word. The characters are flat, the jokes aren't funny, and the plot moves as slow as molasses and on top of that is not very interesting. The animation itself is a mixed bag - I'm not a huge fan of the character designs, but the textures are good. The lip-syncing and movements are really inconsistent, I noticed several moments where the dialogue didn't match up with the mouth movements (at least one scene had Duckmus say something without his mouth moving at all!). The voice actors all did a fine job, if nothing else (I do have to raise an eyebrow at them having most of the characters be Chinese and then seemingly not cast any Asian actors as the voices).

If you want a good animated movie about ducks, go see Migration. I think it's still in theaters. I personally liked it. This film, on the other hand? The best I can say about it is that it's at least better than Go Fish. But if you want to watch a lousy animated movie, I'd say this would definitely fit the bill. Get it? Fit the bill? Because... yeah, okay.

I'm sure eventually Bobsheaux or DazzReviews or Saberspark or whoever will do a review of this movie that's much funnier than mine. In fact, I'm shocked that none of them have reviewed this film before me. You can find a couple reviews of the film on YouTube, though, so there's that.