Condorman (1981)

Very disappointing...

So much average

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

CONDORMAN is a SUPERMAN spoof tainted by association with Walt Disney. The Disney association means that this is a film with a scattershot approach, a mixture of highly dated special effects scenes with humour of the lowest and most obvious variety and a rather twee and 'safe' approach that means nobody really gets badly hurt or killed despite the preposterousness of the plot.Michael Crawford is an obvious choice for the stunt-heavy lead role. His work in SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM has provided a template for him to perform various physical feats without the aid of a stuntman, and in that respect he doesn't disappoint. His grating American accent isn't the best, but then neither is Oliver Reed's Russian one. Speaking of Reed, he plays the villain of the piece, but is entirely distracting given the deep red colour of his skin throughout the production. He looks like he's about to blow a gasket any second.The plot is some Cold War nonsense in which Condorman and his pals go up against the might of the Russian empire. Aside from a few obvious Superman-inspired bits, this feels more like a James Bond spoof, with high speed car chases, exaggerated fight scenes, gadgets and the like. Sadly, it's all very cheesy and dated, and only fans of early '80s cinema are likely to get a kick out of it.

This was in the days before seat-back screens in airliners, "the" film was unavoidable. This one began with a bunch of people in an office talking, then, I think, some of them were somewhere else, talking. No laughs, no action, no clue as to why anyone should care about what comes next, and the production standards of an end-of-the-line "Murder She Wrote" after they moved it to New York. It did not help that I have never appreciated Crawford's acting, he gives me the creeps. If this was a kids' film why did it start off so slow and boring? Maybe the rest of it was better. I don't intend finding out. I'm glad so many people loved it, but there should be an "unsuitable for adults" classification for stuff like this.

This is a kid's movie that I wonder how it could have even appealed to me as a kid back when it first had a little more, uh, technical relevance I suppose? Actually, no, I wouldn't guess so, if at all ever? Was it a tax write-off? Or maybe the filmmakers took too many drugs and drinks while watching James Bond and Pink Panther movies? Or maybe they knew what they were getting into and thought they could still pull off a legitimately entertaining movie for the whole family. I really have no idea how I would've reacted to this is I were a kid, but as a twenty-something, me and the friends I watched it with became practically the Mystery Science Theater guys, heckling and making up lines as it went along. And, in truth, I might've done it even if I was watching it alone. It's camp without knowing it, or if it does know it maybe it's all the smarter for it. But it does try to pass itself off as something for the kiddies when really it's just too ridiculous and inane for anyone.Maybe the title gives it away, but there you have it- he's a man, but he's also a condor, get it? Well, to put it plainly if I can, Woody Wilkins (Michael Crawford) is ambivalent for about a second to take his 'Condorman' idea to the next step- to team up with the CIA! His mission is to stop a Russian terrorist, played by Oliver Reed, while also with the seductive Ruskie 'Bear' (Barbara Carrera). That's really all you need to know, oh wait, there's more: there's a lead henchman with an eye-patch, or is that a marble eye, or both? How about big gargantuan title cards to introduce every single locale (though sometimes, like with the alps scenes, becoming a little confusing again)? Or massive explosions? I think that might sum it up. But really, if you seek out the movie, you should know what to expect not just from the title but from just the LOOK on the cover of the DVD or VHS. It might be one thing if British director Charles Jarrott went for such silly subject matter with more gusto, but it's almost as if he KNOWS how goofy this is, and has car chases that just spring out of nowhere, plus a climactic speed-boat challenge where even more big explosions happen (and the ratio of the henchmen who jump off the boats before explosion and those who stay on during it is maybe 1/2 and 1/2).In other words, it was perfect as a kind of film to rag on, to put it mildly. It might be one thing if it was so good it's bad, but it turns it it's so mediocre it's just, well, bad. It's got heroes and villains that put out dialog that sometimes is a little incoherent, the bumbling sidekick who is SUPPOSED to be a CIA agent, and that darn one-eyed henchmen, come together in a film where said Condorman only takes flight for less than four minutes! If anything kind can be said about it, it's at least not a boring bad movie, where its so relentless with cheesiness that it becomes wearisome. It's almost too whacked out to get dull at any one point. It is consistent in trying to be entertaining when it really isn't, however it thus becomes on the flip-side entertaining again as fodder for the sort of slings and fun that would make Statler & Waldorf of the Muppets die to dig in on. It's simply one of the most unintentionally funny movies of the 80s, at least from Disney.

I caught part of this with my buddies when it was released as a double-feature after some Western (Young Guns, maybe).Amazingly, fewer than 10 (out of 200+) remained in the big screen theater for Condorman.It starts off looking like another moderately entertaining Disney kid's film, but runs downhill rapidly with a combination of predictability, cliché dialog, horrid performances, and low budget production values unusual for a Disney film. Special effects were poorer than films made 30 years earlier.Oliver Reed demonstrates once again that he will do anything for money, Barbara Carrera is pretty to look at but nothing else, and Michael Crawford manages to be goofy but completely uninteresting. We were the last to walk out after perhaps 40 minutes.Yawn!