Review of Condorman (1981) by Todd A — 05 Jul 2012

Much like the Pink Panther this slapstick heavy film has its share of fun but there is a lot of muck to get through first and the rewards might not be worth it.

100 Days of Superheroes.

Day 8- Condorman.

"That's right, Condorman, vulture of the western world!".

In 1981 good ol' Walt decided to dip his own hand into the superhero cookie jar with the production of Condorman.

Similar to Danger Diabolik, this film leans almost closer to that of a spy film than a superhero one. Yet there is still enough heroic elements here that lets it be included on my list of 100 superhero films. Not that I'm particularly looking forward to it.

Despite being both a box office and critical failure Condorman managed to recruit a small cult following due to the excessive repeat showings on the Disney channel, you might have seen them--five or six times. Maybe they barrowed the marketing strategy from Hot Fuzz. Either way Condorman is neither worthy of the box office failure it got, or the over attention on the TV, it really is just a mediocre film not worthy of great praise or panning.

The story follows a man by the name of Woody Nolastname who is an enthusiastic writer of children comic books. He is obsessed with creating âplausibleâ? superheroes by inventing some of their gadgets himself. His favorite character is Condorman, a high flying superhero dressed in a bright orange feather patterned wetsuit.

For whatever reason he's got a buddy in the CIA who think the incompetent Woody would be perfect for a top secret information transfer. The CIA recruits him for a simple job "only a civilian" can perform. Woody chooses to go under the alias of Condorman and ends up infatuated with a female Russian Spy. When that spy decides to defect, Condorman is brought in to escort her back.

Condorman is intended to be a quirky goofy hero, almost like Disney was going for the Inspector Clouseau of superheroes. He has absurd gadgets and gets himself into even more ludicrous circumstances. Michael Crawford does a decent job with the character of Woody and depicts him rightfully as the bumbling clown he needs to be. Unfortunately the other support actors seem to be unable to take their parts seriously (and rightfully so) as they are fairly dry and uninteresting.

The villains are about as generic as one can get. As if using one stereotype wasn't enough, the makers tried to jam in as many as possible for the villain of Krokov, Natalia's fellow spy, manager, boyfriend, world domination seeking, person. He pretty much exists to yell at people "Damn it! How could you let Condorman get away!!!".

As said before the film isn't awful it just has an uninspired feel to it. It's effects are mediocre to bad and no one seemed particularly interested in the project they were involved in. It's fun to watch it at times in the same way that the original Pink Panther films were but to get to those scenes there is a lot of muck to cross through first.