Review: Million Dollar Duck (1971) (DMC #48)
You’ve heard of a goose that laid golden eggs, but how about a duck? Last night we watched Disney’s Million Dollar Duck, the 48th film in the Disnerd Movie Challenge. If you watched with us last night, jump ahead to our review. If you’ve never seen this before or need a refresher, we’ve included our synopsis below.
Synopsis
Scientist Albert Dooley is struggling to pay his family’s bills. He reminisces about how he was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by his college, and muses to himself how that hasn’t worked out. Albert’s son, Jimmy, wants to buy a puppy from his friend for fifty dollars. Albert sadly has to deny the puppy to his son, stating they can’t afford it. Meanwhile, Albert’s wife, Katie, is preparing applesauce in the kitchen. The pages of her cookbook keep accidentally flipping, causing her to misread the ingredients. It tastes horrible, but Albert doesn’t tell Katie this. He insists to her that the family needs to find ways to cut their spending in order to pay their expenses, and he chides her for spending money on clothes. Katie suggests Albert cut his lunch money so she can prepare food for him, but Albert secretly doesn’t want to do that because he can’t stand her cooking. The Dooley’s neighbor, Mr. Finley Hooper, works for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and dislikes Albert intensely, wishing that he could investigate Albert’s family. Albert drives into work, picking up his attorney friend, Fred Hines, along the way. They nearly crash into a hot rod driven by brothers Arvin and Orlo Wadlow. Albert and Fred discuss their financial strains as they head to work. At the laboratory, Albert speaks with several of the animals his department is testing behavioral experiments on. After Albert dumps Katie’s applesauce into a nearby trash can, a monkey sneaks it out to eat it, only be disgusted and pass it along to a duck. The duck enjoys the applesauce. Albert later tries to test the duck’s behavior, but the duck fails all the tests. While Albert is discussing the experiment with his boss, Dr. Gottlieb, the duck wanders off to the Radiology department. The duck is accidentally radiated. Albert takes the duck home, where Jimmy begins to bond with it and affectionately names it “Charley.” Charley sneaks into Mr. Hooper’s pool, where Mr. Hooper’s dog tries to chase Charley out. Albert and Mr. Hooper both fall into the pool during the attempt to get Charley out. As the dog barks at Charley, Charley lays a couple of eggs. Albert says they cannot keep the eggs for themselves due to the radiation in Charley’s body, so he decides to bury them later that night. He accidentally drops one of the eggs, which cracks and out falls a large gold nugget.
The next day, Albert asks Dr. Gottlieb about the chances of eggs being able to turn from organic to inorganic. Dr. Gottlieb recites one particular experiment, but dismisses Albert’s hypothesis that an egg could turn into gold. Albert gets a second opinion from another scientist, who confirms that the eggs are indeed solid gold and are the result of radiation mixed with ingredients from the applesauce. Albert realizes that Charley lays eggs at the sound of a dog bark at the right pitch. Albert asks Fred to help him create a business in which they can use the gold, but Fred doesn’t believe Albert’s story. Charley has been given away to a farmer as the result of an earlier discussion Albert and Katie had, but he and Fred retrieve the duck back. Albert barks at Charley with the correct pitch, causing the duck to lay another gold egg. Fred is astonished. Albert and Fred discuss what to do with the gold. Fred insists they need to save the gold and not spend it. Albert begins dreaming about all the things he can do with that much gold, and starts to care more about the duck than Jimmy’s well being, much to Katie’s frustration. The next day, a banker calls Katie regarding overdrawn checks. Charley lays a gold egg at that moment and Katie takes it to the bank to use it as money. The bank manager tells Katie they cannot take the gold for legal reasons, and Katie takes the egg to a refinery to exchange for $900. Albert admonishes Katie for this, but Fred arrives and explains that this is the only solution they have because he is unable to get the Dooleys a business license. He explains that the family would be in serious legal trouble. However, he soon realizes that Katie can sell the gold to various refineries and be honest with the story that a duck is laying gold eggs because no one will possibly believe it anyway. Katie takes gold nuggets to several refineries, and while they all indeed laugh at her story and accept the gold regardless, they each inform the Department of the Treasury for possible fraud. The Department discusses the possibility that the Dooleys have learned how to make gold. Although they try to keep the story a secret, the rumors begin spreading across town and to the State Department. Before too long, the story of the duck that can lay golden eggs spreads internationally. After the members discuss some aliases Katie has been using at the refineries, Mr. Hooper concludes that the gold is coming from the Dooleys.
Albert and Katie’s marriage becomes strained due to Albert’s increasing avarice. Fred uses some of the gold to buy himself a new car that Albert had his eyes on, and he chastises Fred for spending money even though the Dooleys were told not to. Albert begins to worry about the radiation within Charley running out. He asks Katie where Charley is so that he can test the radiation. Jimmy has taken Charley to the Wadlow house, where the Wadlow brothers test the duck’s radiation on some of their hot rod parts. They bond with Jimmy and his duck, and are furious when Albert takes Charley away. Albert and Fred are able to get Charley to lay another gold egg and excitedly discuss keeping him safe so they can harvest the eggs. Jimmy overhears this and believes his father only cares about the gold. Jimmy goes outside with Charley and talks to Mr. Hooper, who slyly mentions that he’s never seen a duck egg and asks if he can get Charley to lay one. Jimmy innocently says that his father barks at the duck to make it lay eggs. Mr. Hooper tries barking to no avail, but his dog barks at the duck and Charley lays an egg. Katie arrives to take the egg from Mr. Hooper before he can leave, but Mr. Hooper reports his findings back to his boss. Mr. Hooper promises he will confiscate the duck to prove it. His boss doesn’t believe any of it, but then the President of the United States demands that the Treasury Department get their hands on the duck. At the Dooley home, Albert, Katie, and Fred all argue over Charley, with Albert and Fred wanting to keep harvesting the gold and Katie demanding they think more about Jimmy and Charley’s well-being. The Treasury Department employees arrive at the house and demand Albert turn over the duck. Jimmy sneaks out of the house with Charley. When they all realize Jimmy and Charley are missing, they chase after them. Jimmy manages to successfully evade them until he is picked up by the Wadlow brothers. They drive off with Jimmy to help him escape. The Wadlows drive to the top of parking garage, where Albert, Katie, and Fred follow. Arvin and Orlo suspend a ladder from the roof of the parking garage to a building across the alley so Jimmy can cross, but the ladder slips and hangs suspended, close to snapping in half. Albert arrives and implores Jimmy to take his hand. At first, Jimmy tells his father to leave, believing he just wants Charley for himself. As the ladder is about to break, Jimmy understands Albert is there is save him and he grabs his father’s hand just in time. The Treasury Department takes Charley away and arrests Albert for violating gold regulations. Albert is put on trial with Charley as an exhibit, where the judge orders Mr. Hooper to produce a gold egg. Mr. Hooper is unable to get the bark pitch right, so Albert steps in one last time to bark. Charley lays an egg, to Mr. Hooper’s excitement. However, the radiation has disintegrated, and the egg is completely normal. Albert is acquitted based on lack of evidence. Albert states that he knows now that there are more important things than wealth, like his family, and he decides to let Jimmy keep Charley, much to
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: I’ve never seen this one before, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. It looks to be a modern take on the tale of the goose that laid golden eggs. All I keep thinking of is the geese that lay golden eggs in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I guess we’ll see how this unfolds.
Kevin: Ah, another film with Dean Jones?! Well, we’ve been 3/3 with his movies, so I’m feeling good about this one so far! Plus, it has Sandy Duncan, so that’s a bonus, too! Like Megan, I immediately thought of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and I knew this was based on one of Aesop’s Fables.
Thoughts After Watching
That was disappointing
Kevin: I first came away from this movie thinking that it had some cute moments with Charley the duck and a few bits of comedy here and there, but that it was also boring in several places. After thinking about it more, I definitely don’t like this one much for a few different reasons. Sure, the cute moments exist, and I have a feeling I might have enjoyed this more if I had seen it as a kid. As an adult, there is a lot about this movie that is just plain awful and, well, very stupid. It’s almost insulting to ask us to suspend our disbelief this much over the bizarre science. Honestly, my thoughts here are similar to my thoughts on The Absent-Minded Professor I think Disney just really had no idea how make science look interesting on film back in these earlier decades. And… oh man, these characters are just so bad… more on that below. But yeah, it is still a very boring movie on the whole. I’m fine admitting that I chuckled here and there at some moments. However, I was losing interest not too long after Charley became radiated. The plot became very clunky at that point, and the comedy was hit or miss. It all culminates in a chase scene at the end of the film, reminiscent of other films from this era. By this point, I lost a lot of interest in what’s going on with the characters that I really just wanted the movie to be over.
So much for progress
Megan: This may be a film of the ‘70s, but with the way women are portrayed in this film you’d think we’d gone back in time. Honestly, it’s a bit cringe-worthy to hear some of the lines, like when Katie tells Albert that she’d be happy to make his lunches because she sees it as part of her wifely duties, even quoting their marriage vows as “to love and obey ‘til death do us end.” The whole exchange made us cringe. For one thing, the word “obey” in the marriage vows is incredibly outdated—one of those holdovers from a time when marriage was less about love and more of a business transaction where women couldn’t even own property. Even putting that aside, the exchange is still flawed because Katie believes it is her duty as a wife to make food for her husband. Now if she wanted to make lunch for Albert just because she wanted to do something nice for him, fine, but the exchange is further problematized because Albert seems just as incapable of making his own lunch. He’s been buying his lunch at work, and while he refuses Katie’s offer of making him lunches to save money (presumably because he cannot stand her terrible cooking), he makes no offer to make his own lunch instead. When he comes to Katie about cutting back their expenses, he’s quick to cut from Katie’s budget rather than his own. (To be fair, Katie’s spending does seem a bit frivolous since the movie implies she is constantly spending money on clothes she doesn’t need.) It would seem that Katie and Albert’s marriage isn’t exactly an equal partnership.
Megan: Personally, I take issue with the way Katie’s character has been developed. Since she is only one of two female characters in a film dominated by male characters, she becomes representative of women, and it’s not exactly a pretty picture. She’s made out to be stupid and ditzy—which works to Albert and Fred’s advantage (or so they think) when they decide she should be the one to take the golden eggs to the different refineries, because no one will believe a ditzy woman. It can be fun when female characters exploit sexist bias to their advantage, but it feels incredibly wrong to watch men literally profiting off a woman’s societal disadvantage. To give Katie some credit, she is a good mother in that she cares about Jimmy more than the duck while Albert on several occasions prioritizes the duck over his own son. Also, in a way Katie is the reason the story plays out in the first place. She’s logical enough to question the weird ingredients when her recipe page is flipped while she’s making applesauce, but she unfortunately rejects her inner compass to instead trust the book (likely written by a man). She forges ahead anyway to make the disastrous yet lucrative concoction that eventually causes the duck to lay golden eggs after it’s been exposed to radiation.
Kevin: There is a very outdated use of gender stereotypes going on here, and it’s one of the worst. Basically, the men are the competent albeit selfish go-getters and the women are the dutiful yet unintelligent house wives. Katie is just a massive waste of a character. It’s true that she kick-starts the plot by creating the applesauce, but outside of that Katie lacks any agency needed to make her a likeable character. It’s very unfortunate that she is written to be this ditzy with no character arc. I honestly found myself getting annoyed with her many times throughout the film, and it’s not even her fault, but rather the fault of the writers who created her. Not only is she so ditzy, the men in her life exploit her for it and the writers play it off for cheap laughs. Frankly, Sandy Duncan deserved better than this. She won a Golden Globe award for her role here, and it’s such a shame that the win wasn’t for something more deserving. I don’t know what Sandy’s own feelings are on this role and having won an award for it, however it is still unfortunate to witness. I’m not sure if Katie is supposed to have some type of intellectual disability or just is just lacking in common sense, but regardless the way it is made out to be comedic is very sad. There are much, much better examples of characters whose disabilities, real or implied, are not used just to get a laugh out of people. The next movie we will see Sandy in is The Cat From Outer Space. I just hope she plays a more interesting character.
Megan: Then, of course, there’s the other woman in the story: Mrs. Hooper. The two women never speak to each other, thus failing the Bechdel test. What’s more, Mrs. Hooper’s character seems only to exist for a comedic hit. With the exception of her witnessing Jimmy steal the bike and escape with the duck at the end of the film, her only appearances on screen are to bring a drink to her husband (which he then spills when Albert’s car exhaust blows into the yard) or to scold her husband for what she perceives as staring at Katie. That’s it. She, like Katie, has no real agency of her own in this film, and her role is incredibly sexist. The film also uses the second woman not to show women supporting women, but rather to position the women in opposition by insinuating Mrs. Hooper’s jealousy of Katie. On the whole, the film doesn’t leave much for female audiences to root for.
I sure hope that dog and duck were friends…
Megan: As with previous films featuring animal actors, I certainly hope that the animals in this film were okay and that the way the editor cut this film together made things look more dangerous than they actually were. I was very concerned about the safety of the duck when it and the dog were in the pool. For one thing, the duck was being pushed around by the pool net, which I’m sure it didn’t appreciate. Then you add in the dog, and while the duck does get a few nips in that the dog certainly doesn’t appreciate, I was still incredibly concerned that the dog might grab the duck. I hope that in reality the animals were friends and used to playing with each other, but in all likelihood they probably weren’t, which means that might have been a very traumatizing scene for the duck. I’m certainly glad we now have animal actor laws in place to protect animals, but it’s still uncomfortable to watch films from before those restrictions where animals are in peril for the sake of human entertainment.
Just a bit too absurd
Kevin: There are a lot of mixed reviews with this film, all ranging between calling it fun and awful. However, they all agree that it is a really weird movie. I definitely think it’s over the top weird, but it’s not the most awful movie we’ve seen so far. The issues with Million Dollar Duck are because of the lack of any good characters, being more boring than entertaining, and the insanely silly plot that borders on total absurdity. There are a ton of these ridiculous moments all over the film. One of the earliest things I noticed is that the door to the Radiology department is wide open for Charley to walk through. Why on earth would this room be that accessible that a hapless duck could walk right on in? Another bizarre moment in the film is when President Nixon orders the Department of the Treasury to get their hands on the duck. Disney certainly wasn’t pulling any punches here, and I wonder if they did this on purpose to put Nixon in a bad light. I knew it was meant to be funny, but it actually looks more awkward than anything.
A missed opportunity
Megan: After Albert had the gold egg yolk analyzed and received the report that listed off all the applesauce ingredients, I was certain he was going to run home and try to get Katie to recreate her recipe mistakes so he could give more of that applesauce to the duck. Unfortunately, that never features as part of the plot. The applesauce ingredients are merely there as a way to explain how the duck was able to lay golden eggs. Perhaps the filmmakers were leaving room for a potential sequel, wherein Albert, having been cleared of any charges, would again try to get the duck to lay golden eggs by giving it applesauce and sneaking it into the science lab to see what happens. Personally, I don’t think the film quite deserves a sequel. It was cute and all, but with that missed plot opportunity aside, the whole thing was rather predictable, and not nearly as funny as I had hoped it would be.
Verdict
Megan: 4
Kevin: 2
Final Score: 3
Ways to Watch
DVD