"Aqua Duck": Hit or Miss?

[angilbas]

"Aqua Duck" seems to have more of a 'love it or hate it' quality than any other WB cartoon of the 1960s. Here's your chance to say whether or not Daffy was funny under the sun.

-Tony

[PorkyandDaffy]

I don't care for it too much, but I don't think it's too bad. I prefer it to most other 60's WB cartoons.

[The Dork Knight]

Aqua Duck will always be a miss.

[J Lee]

The worst Daffy cartoon ever done during the studio's original run (but to be fair, by 1963 there were also some Jones and Freleng cartoons I hated as much, or worse, than this McKimson dud).

[Randy Watts]

Definitely a miss in my book. I'll give 'em a few points for at least trying something a little out of the ordinary. It's still a miss, though.

[Matthew Hunter]

Hit. I like this one. I don't think it's a masterpiece by any means, and the mediocre music is not a plus, but watching Daffy go crazy in the desert is pretty funny. What I like most about it is that there is essentially only one character, the little rat doesn't do that much. I also think the backgrounds are cool...how they made the sky red and the ground white.
-Matthew

[don Jaime]

Miss! Miss!

MISS: Yes?

Let's get out of here, Fozzie.

[laugh4me]

"Aqua Duck" isn't one of the best cartoons they made, but I do enjoy it.
So I give it a "hit", just not an enthusiastic one...
:bosko:

[Ricochet]

Hit! I like every animated cartoons made in the olden days, before your new fangled He-Man and your Anime craze! No offense meant to those cartoons, though. ;)

[Tintin]

Personally, it's a good cartoon, a little hit! :)

[DR. BELCH]

--esp. the bit with Daffy and the invisible bartender, where he picks a fight and is grabbed by the "shirtfront". It's better than the one with Daffy and the Goofy Gophers, in which one of them was very badly-voiced (sounded like the other fellow with John Cleese in the Monty Python "Bookshop" sketch). Plus the irony of the desert flooding with rain the moment he finally parts with his gold nugget for a measly glass of water from the desert rat....

[angilbas]

"Aqua Duck" has a very distinctive atmosphere, greatly enhanced by Robert Gribbroek's hot desert setting. The coppery sky and bleached, leafless shrubs would have done Salvador Dali proud. Mel Blanc gives deft touches of fur to Daffy's voice, making the character's delirium sound real.

The pack rat is rather homely (Freleng would have designed him more creatively; Jones would have made him cute, maybe as cute as "The Mouse on 57th Street"), but McKimson and company rightfully kept him quiet.

If this film been made around 1940 (with McKimson animating for Jones), the rat would have been as verbose as Sniffles. A post-1964 "Aqua Duck" wouldn't have been as well-drawn or colored (think of "Well Worn Daffy") and more likely than not Speedy would have been cast as the rat.

-Tony