When Woody is enlisted by his CIA friend Harry (James Hampton) to make a delivery to a beautiful Soviet agent (Barbara Carrera), he uses 'Condorman' as his codename. After the mission goes well, he is drawn back in when the Soviet agent wants Condorman to aid in her defection to the West.
Will Condorman rise from the printed page?
This movie is incredible.
An artefact from a time before the Mouse's entertainment dominance, Condorman is one of the stranger offerings Disney produced under the stewardship of CEO Ron Miller. Alongside other more adult-skewing fare like 1979's The Black Hole and 1982's Tron, it is a strange amalgamation of different genres that is trying to bridge both Disney's familiar audience, with a more adult tone and subject matter.
In other words, it is the polar opposite of the corporation's product in the 2010s.
There is something distinctly contemporary about Woody's approach to his art - he will only include elements in his comics that he has tested out himself. In this respect, he is feels like a forerunner/unintentional parody of modern-day fans who are obsessed with making their particular pop culture obsession appear as mature and 'realistic' as possible.
So much about this movie feels like kids trying to play adults - you can feel the filmmakers trying to find their way out of Disney's G-rated space, which results in some bizarre incongruities. The movie is even lit like a Disney comedy from the Seventies, which make scenes like the film's car chase come off more along the lines of the long-running Lovebug movies than even Moore-era Bond.
While the aesthetics are bright and bland, the political dimension is pretty dark, even for a Bond-esque movie - Oliver Reed's villain feels like something out of Le Carre, and his relationship with Barbara Carrera's double agent Natalia carries a sense of menace and danger that is way more adult than the movie perhaps intended.
There is something very watchable about this confection - the movie is not short of ideas, and while the pacing sags at points, there is plenty of weirdness and flat-out bad notions (such as Woody's disguise as a Sheik) that keep the attention. Compared with the cookie-cutter aesthetics and dramatic conservatism of the Marvel films, Condorman is fascinating.
There is something appealing about the movie's earnest investment in its lumpy premise, and the practical -if ridiculous - effects, that brought me some of the rush I used to get from reading Tintin or watching cartoons. There is a sugar-rush quality to the endless parade of gadgets, disguises and subterfuge catches some of the feeling of being a bored kid trying to imagine something more exciting than the mundanity of everyday life.
This is a movie of contradictions, and so are my feelings toward it. While I love everything about this movie, there is one element that I despise as much as I enjoy the rest of the movie. That thing is Michael Crawford's performance as Woody. In his defence, he is hamstrung by an appalling American accent, and a character defined solely by his Walter Mitty-esque fantasies. But Woody is the one element that required a naïveté and childlike optimism that Crawford struggles to find. I kept thinking of Gene Wilder whenever he was onscreen (based on Crawford's hairstyle, maybe the filmmakers were thinking the same thing?).
One of the reasons for the movie's success is that despite its disparate parts, the score by Henry Mancini plays a big role in holding it all together - the title theme reminded me of his epic title track from Lifeforce, except with added choir, and perfectly captures the OTT tone that the other elements of the movie do not always reach.
As of this writing, Condorman is currently unavailable on Disney+. A shame.
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