What a fun little adventure espionage movie! Woodrow Wilkins is a cartoonist who likes to test real-life costumes for his comic book character Condorman. Also, his best friend is a CIA desk agent who ends up asking Woody to do an innocuous civilian exchange for the agency. Only Natalia, the other civilian, is actually a KGB agent and when she decided to defect, she requests “Condorman” as her liaison.
The whole thing is very silly, but silly Cold War-era espionage movies with a ton of fun gadgets is very pleasing to me. I mean, it’s James Bond but with the cheese factor knowingly turned up way higher. There are quite a few cliches, especially in how Natalia is written, but that’s pretty much all made up for when you have a chase with a gypsy wagon that turns into a car that turns into a hydrofoil, all at the push of a few buttons.
I…really can’t think of much else to say about this. I can definitely see it being something I return to in the future because of how fun and silly and endearing it is.
Stats and stuff…
1981, USA
directed by Charles Jarrott, written by Marc Stirdivant
starring Michael Crawford, Oliver Reed, Barbara Carrera, James Hampton
I’m ranking all my Challenge films on Flickchart (as I do all the films I see), a movie-ranking website that asks you to choose your favorite between two movies until it builds a ranked list of your favorites. Just for fun, I will average out the rankings and keep a running tally of whose recommendations rank the highest. When you add a film to Flickchart, it pits it against films already on your chart to see where it should fall. Here’s how Condorman entered my chart:
Condorman > Sylvia Scarlett
Condorman < The Shining
Condorman > The Three Caballeros
Condorman < The Moon-Spinners
Condorman > Gone Girl
Condorman > Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Condorman < Little Shop of Horrors
Condorman < The Battle of Algiers
Condorman > Breakfast on Pluto
Condorman < Why Don’t You Play In Hell?
Condorman < Los tallos amargos
Condorman > Love Crime (2010)
Final #1212 out of 3718 (67%)
It is now my #1 Charles Jarrott film, my #1 Michael Crawford film, my #3 Oliver Reed film, my #27 Action Comedy, my #22 Spy Film, my #25 Superhero film, and my #6 film of 1981.
Condorman was recommended by Andrew Robinson, a film blogger friend. Averaging together this #1212 ranking with my #930 ranking of his other film, The Color of Money, gives Andrew an average ranking of 1071.
A few more screenshots…
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