La cane aux oeufs d'or

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!».

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...

I sat down in 2021 to watch the 1971 Disney movie "The Million Dollar Duck". This is my second time to watch it actually. I remember watching it back in my childhood, probably in the early 1980s, but I could only vaguely recall the movie. So as I had the opportunity to sit down in 2021 to watch it, of course I did so.

This movie is still very entertaining and watchable, even now 50 years after the movie was initially released. So writers Ted Key and Roswell Rogers definitely did a good job with the script here, and that is quite the accomplishment which makes for a truly timeless classic movie.

"The Million Dollar Duck" is a twist on the classic tale of fowl being able to produce a golden egg. So it is a familiar storyline, but with added contents. And I will say that the Disney fingerprint definitely is showing on this 1971 movie. There was just something profoundly enjoyable about the movies Disney made back in the day.

The cast in "The Million Dollar Duck" definitely was good, and of course having Dean Jones in the lead role certainly made for a good movie, as he had a great track record with his older Disney movies. So if you enjoyed him in other of Disney's movies, you will also enjoy him in "The Million Dollar Duck".

This was definitely a movie well worth taking the time to sit down and watch again, and it is a movie that has something to offer to the entire family.

My rating of "The Million Dollar Duck" lands on a six out of ten stars.

I'm sure not too many of the kids or even the parents that took their kids to see The Million Dollar Duck back in 1971 would realize that the British film Mister Drake's Duck was the inspiration for this Disney film. Nevertheless the British film of 1951 and the Disney film of 1971 are remarkably similar. Only the British had Mister Drake's Duck lay uranium eggs whereas this Disney duck lays gold ones after a bit radiation exposure and a concoction that Sandy Duncan makes and gets fed to the duck.

The British film was not one of their better comedies, but Mister Drake's Duck had some good moments and nice satire on the government of Great Britain in those post war Labour Days. This one just has a lot of good players looking very silly.

Two of them are stars Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan as a research scientist and his wife who are barely scraping by financially. The duck in question is part of a research project conducted by head scientist Jack Kruschen. When the duck flunks the intelligence test Kruschen gives him to Jones and his young son Lee Harcourt Montgomery becomes attached to it also.

Of course when it starts laying those golden yolks inside the egg at that point Jones and car pooling neighbor Tony Roberts think they've hit the leprechaun's pot. But then in 1971 America as now ownership of gold is most restrictive. Not to mention that ducks that can just squat and those orbs can ruin the monetary structure of the world. That sends neighbor Joe Flynn into action who works for the Treasury Department and Flynn's supervisor James Gregory.

The Million Dollar Duck has far more silliness than genuine humor in it. Far from gold, it's not even good sounding brass.

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.