#728 – Anatar (2023)

Anatar (2023)

Film review #728

Director: Alan Smithee

SYNOPSIS: A planet of duck-like people is destroyed by pollution and leave their planet in a spaceship to seek a new home. They arrive at the planet Pandoro, where the ducks want to conquer the planet, but Princess Avia wants to convince the inhabitants to share the planet. Using a machine to take a human form, she heads down to the planet to try and find a peaceful solution, where she runs into a young scientist named Germano

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Anatar is a 2023 Italian sci-fi film. The plot concerns a race of blue humanoid ducks, who have to flee their home planet after it is destroyed, and arrive at another planet named Pandoro. The duck leader Dark Feather wants to conquer the planet, but Princess Avia wants two weeks to try and convince the population to live peacefully with them. To that effect, she uses an experimental machine to turn her human, and heads to the planet, where she meets Germano, a young scientist/inventor, and a romance blossoms. Yes, beneath the outlandish premise, it’s a very standard fish-out-of-water romance story that offers nothing new, and barely holds together. There’s clearly an attempt to parody the Avatar franchise, with the Anatar title, the planet named Pandoro (Pandora) and the blue ducks. Apart from that though, there’s not really any reference to the film’s, so you can’t really situate this film as a parody, it’s just a few references for the trailer to leech off of Avatar’s popularity I suppose. The whole cast is particularly bland; the leads have no chemistry or acting ability, the English dubbing is horrible and unprofessional, and while there’s obvious parodies of Darth Vader among others, none of the writing really bites or has meaning: there’s no sense of comedic timing or setup that makes any scene really worthwhile. Also, some of the ducks just blatantly speak like Donald Duck, for no reason.

While you can recognise the various parodies to characters/people/places as you go through the film, there’s no real pacing to the overall story, as it meanders all over the place. The film even goes for a fourth wall breaking moment where Germano dies, but the film cuts and the director says that he only dies in the first draft, so they go back and re-shoot it, it makes no sense. This might also be a reference to the troubled production of the film and studio interference which led to the director disowning the film and wanting to be credited as “Alan Smithee.” I can only imagine how bad it was for a director to abandon a film such as this. I just cannot imagine any interference being so bad it ruins this film more than it is. The final shot is the ultimate insult, as the injured Germano is taken to the space ship and put into the machine which Avia used to turn humanoid and…the film just ends mid-scene. I suppose it’s meant to signify that Germano has been transformed into a duck, but there’s zero value in not resolving this; the ambiguity adds nothing. On the surface, Anatar looks like a unholy fusion of Avatar and Howard the Duck, but doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to make it at least an interesting parody or satire. A meaningless, carbon copy story combined with flavourless humour make this a pointless experience that provides no value or incentive to watch.