After terruble Superman films, Condorman a nice change of pace. Not so much terruble as trooly horruble. It be movie made for kidz – at a time when kidz not know any better (ie. dat kidz movies could aktually be good). Also, monster would like to file formal complaint becuz dis not superhero movie. Again! It more like Slovakian James Bond film.
Our hero, Woody, be comic book writer (hate him alreddy!) who invent superhero: Condorman. Like most writerz, he like to dress up and akt like charakter from his own book. Just like George R. R. Martin when he dekapitate all dose homeless men after write Game of Drones. Monster not sure if Woody crazy, stupid, or both, but he know one ting for sure – he damn annoying! Michael Crawford play part of Woody wit all restrained finesse of mouseketeer mainlining Red Bull. He like stage aktor hamming it up for de cheap seats! Should mebbe consider career in theater.
So, when we first meet Woody, he decide to jump off Eiffel Tower in Condorman suit and fly. But wardrobe malfunktion make him crash into Seine (which, by de way, mean “boob” in French. True. Me look it up!). Lucky for him he slowed down by wires holding him up.
Woody be friends with CIA agent who ask him to make sekret dokument exchange wit Russian spy. Huh? Becuz Russia demand exchange to be made using civilians. HUH? And CIA have to use civilian instead of spy pretending to be civilian becuz…HUH??!!!
Woody meet up wit sexy Russian spy, Natalia. Vavavavoom! Monster not kick her out of bed for eating chocolate chippee cookies. Unless she not share wit monster in which case he kick her out. Den invite her back when he finished. Anyway, Woody meet up wit sexy Russian, Natalia. He introduce himself = codename Condorman. Bad guyz show up. He beats dem up…somehow. He good, lucky or both? Me not sure, but monster know one ting: he still damn annoying!
Woody go back to life as loozer. Den get call from CIA. Natalia want to defekt. But only will defekt wit help of Condorman. Monster know what dat like. Once, after have Grand Slam breakfast at Dennys, monster not defekt for tree day! Have to call Elmo to help. He have to use box of Qtips and entire bottle of linseed oil!
For some reazon, bad guyz don’t want her to defekt. Dey try to stop Woody!
Shootoout! Car chase – which, monster have to admit, not dat bad. Stuntz! Crashes! Monster notice dis “kid-friendly” film shot at a time when a-okay to kill off bad guyz. Dey crash, get blown up, fall off cliff – and iz all good fun!
Condorman able to escape becuz his old truck really disguized condorman car wit floaty wings. How he get all dese gadjets? Why, CIA gave to him! American government waste money to build speshul yellow condor cars and condor sootz for civilian fake spies! Dats why ekonomy in da toilet! Dats why Cookie’s 401k almost worthless and me have to sign up to be tester for ass fur exfoliator at research lab! Don’t get monster started!
Dey get away to Italy. Crash wedding!
Den check into hotel. English-speaking “Italian” kids rekognize Natalia as inspirashun for comik book charakter Laser Lady! Sexy Russian spy tink Woody cool. I repeat: sexy girl tink guy who write comic book cool! Okay, monster accept fakt dat CIA send civilian wit no training on important misshun. Cookie accept fakt dat CIA pay for all gadjets for misshun. But dis a bit of a stretch, no?
Bad guyz kidnap Natalia. Woody and his CIA friend disguize demself as sheiks and crash party.
CIA buddy set off exploziuns. How he possibly can hide bombs under his sheik suit? Never mind dat. Woody have a little surprize for Natalia hiding under HIS robe…
Dat’s right! Condorman soot. Natalia jump on and he giver her ride of her life.
Dey get away. CIA buddy forgets to put car brake on and car roll into lake. For some reazon. Boat chase! Lasers! More bad guyz crash, burn, blow up!
Hey Cookie! Great review as usual. Sadly, I could never get my iTunes rental for this movie to work, and I could not find it anywhere else, either! (And it’s not for want of trying.) The closest I got was the Disney Online site, which as I expected did not allow the movie to be rented from Canada. Haters. Superman III is queued up and ready to go, though.
Anyway, I DID watch a number of clips from the movie on Youtube and did get the gist of it. It didn’t look that great, and your review confirms it. I was even rather disappointed by the car chase scene, where after one of the Porsches gets “flamed” it then goes over a cliff – all the while the car SPEEDS up! Stupid driver – I’m sure the brakes still worked. My first reaction would be to, you know, STOP. Although they were evil henchmen, so probably not that bright. Also, when one of the Porsches plowed into another, the crashee exploded BEFORE impact. Stupid cars – can’t even get the timing right.
Also, during the boat chase scene, the lasers seem to perfectly reflect off the water in random directions. I pity the poor villager out there on shore somewhere innocently walking their dog or something when a reflected beam ZZZZAAAPSS him into oblivion.
Oh well, perhaps it’s just as well that I missed most of it. I know the movie was aimed at kids, but the logic that it would be okay for them is the same as that which says that that stuff at the back of the fridge (of undetermined age) that you wouldn’t eat is okay to put in their school lunch.
The upside of the whole thing is that iTunes cancelled the rental fee and gave me credit for three free song downloads for my troubles! So, yay me! At least something good came of the whole thing!
I was waiting for Michael Crawford to burst into “Phantom of the Opera” at any time as he was jumping off of building. Would have been a much more interesting movie as a musical……LOL
Wait, I thought it said Condom man…
Are you retired from tv writing buddy? Cartoons, comics and Nipon stuff. Hardly someone on the up, what’s happening?
Hi Joe! Kate Hewlett posted this on Twitter, very funny! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HMV3R0jRq4is
Happily, I didn’t “get” to watch Condorman, but Cookie’s review was wonderful. 🙂 I’m wondering if Cookie was the only one who watched it…
So, Joe. Which character in your comic book do you like to dress up as? I was reading Cookie’s awesome as always review when I lost track of time. I think I lost about 15 minutes. Right when my computer went to screen saver I woke up. As I finished reading Cookie’s awesome as always review I couldn’t help but wonder why I itched so much under my arm. Keep up the good work Cookie! Better you than me.
Nowadays, when they make movies aimed at kids, they sometimes make them entertaining for adults, too. Some things get better.
@gforce Superman III has already been shipped from Netflix to me. If that’s where you queued it, I’ll try not to keep it too long so you’ll get your chance to see it.
Just catching up after missing a few days — How did I miss another SuperMovie of the Week?
I just wanted to weigh in on the recent entry about “Tech is tarnishing Tinseltown”
Someone commented earlier this week that people won’t pay for a movie or a show if they can get it for free, and so ad-sponsored sites might be the way to go. I was an early user of Hulu, and certainly the ad-supported model of tv-on-demand works fine for me.
But…. I’m also quite happy to pay for a show I like.
I cancelled my cable TV years ago, and so watched the final three seasons of SG1, all five seasons of Atlantis, and the complete but all-too-short full series of SGU on iTunes (with the TV plugged into my computer so I can watch on a good-sized screen). (I also bought the DVDs, because I’m that much of a fan and wanted to support Stargate, but mostly I watch them on iTunes.) I didn’t mind waiting a day (or occasionally more) after the show aired for the convenience of watching on my own time, without paying a huge cable bill, and without commercials or spoiler-filled “next week on Stargate…” promos.
Of course, I realize that this was probably a big part of the challenges facing Atlantis and SGU in particular — with so many fans watching in “non-traditional” ways, the series’ ratings took a hit. (Sorry about that…. I really did want to support the shows. I just couldn’t stand to pay Time Warner Cable $100+ per month for a hundred channels I never watch and lousy service that always seemed to go out on Friday nights anyway.)
So maybe that’s why NBC for example decided not to make the latest (and final) season of “Chuck” available for download anywhere. Not on iTunes, not on Amazon, not on Hulu, not on the NBC website. (Yes, I’m a Chuck fan, and I’m not ashamed to say it.) They wanted everyone to watch it live on Friday nights, which I actually could do, since it’s broadcast and my TV has rabbit-ears, But… “Chuck” is highly serialized, so if you miss one episode, you’ll be lost in the next one, because you can’t watch it online to catch up. … Well, actually, you can. Just not legally. …
And that’s my point: I’m not going to make a fuss and say that my rights are being in some way violated because NBC (or anyone else) doesn’t provide their product for free, in any format that I like. That’s ridiculous. They have no obligation — legal or otherwise — to do so, and while there’s an argument to be made about public ownership of the airwaves, I think in this case it doesn’t really apply.
Still, here I am. I’m a fan. I like their product and want to give them money for it, and I’m not alone. If their business model can’t find a way to make that work, is it any wonder they’re in trouble?
– KB
Hey! Where can I sign up to be a tester for ass fur exf…
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Ya know, there’s some things I really should keep to myself. 😛
das
For you Warehouse 13 fans out there, a T-shirt for 24 hours only:
http://www.teefury.com/
I started watching Condorman with great trepidation. I’d never heard of it before, I don’t know if it even got an Australian release but it certainly never appeared on my radar as a 10 year old.
As it turns out I was actually pleasantly surprised! I guess if you expect a steaming pile of turds but get compost instead you count your blessings.
It was an entertaining take on the spy genre. If you take into account when it was made the production values were actually quite high. The car and boat chases were well executed. The locations were beautiful and authentic. And Condorman’s wing suit was quite well engineered.
Sure, the flying effects left a little to be desired. The wires were clearly visible in the wide shots but if you look at the quality of the compositing for the closeups I’m actually glad that they did some practical flying effects because if the whole thing was comped it would have been absolutely awful!
Michael Crawford’s accent was appalling. Sometimes he would sound like JFK while other times he sounded like a drunk Foghorn Leghorn. He could have just used his normal English accent and it probably would have fitted in with the spy genre a bit better! I guess he was trying to break the Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em stereotype.
Anyway, I would rate this film up there with the two modern Superman films and definitely better than Batman and Superman and the Mole Men. Unfortunately, because it’s not actually a superhero film I can’t rate it at all.
Bring on Superman III which I haven’t seen since the 80s and I’m sure will destroy all my fond childhood memories of it.
Condorman!!! A movie I haven’t seen since I was a kid, for all the reasons that CM writes about. I was unfortunate enough to watch this disaster on the big screen. CM didn’t mention in his review the awful blue-screened SFX (if they can even be called that), to show Condorman “flying”, that seemed to have been done by school children. But even that was better than the visible suspension belt cables for the other so-called flying scenes. I think even one cookie’s being generous. At least in Some Mother’s Do Have ‘Em all the amusing disasters were a deliberate part of the script!
I see from gforce I’m not the only person who had problems with itunes. I also turned to youbute, and settled on watching a serialized version of the movie on that venue. And discovered that the movie was in German. Which my sister speaks fluently, it being her native tongue, but which is not mine. Still, I found that this made the movie marginally more watchable, if only because my mind had something to engage it other than focusing on how ridiculoous this movie was.
Cookie monster covered the movie very well. I’m suprised he didn’t comment on the absurdity of the opening scene, however. Not even in the 1980s could one just climb on the Eiffel Tower like it was a jungle jim. If nothing else, Parisians detest picking up pieces parts of potential jumpers. And with that outfit, the guys in white suits and oversized butterfly nets would have been out in force. That alone really sunk the movie for me. Nerdy writer testing out the outfit on a ountainside? Maybe. But In the middle of the capital of France?
A few familiar faces on the actors side, which watching in German gave me a whole new perspective on their ating abilities. Alas, not even my fondness for Oliver Reed could make me enjoy the movie, and just reminded me of some of the other films he did in later years that, well, stunk.
Anyways Superman 3 is already downloaded, so I will grit my teeth, and use my four day break to get through that movie in time for next week. I do hope we have something better to look forward to the week following.
Thanks to Cookie Monster for the review(and some entertaining turns of frazes) as well as Mr. M for making the review possible.
Hahaha! I had completely forgotten Michael Crawford was the “hero” in this — more likely I had blanked it out of my mind 🙂
@DP – I actually mean queued up on my PC as in already downloaded. So, take your time. I did watch about the first 10 minutes of it already. Steel yourself, so to speak!
Inspired by the various non-American superhero films from a few days ago, I noticed that there wasn’t an entry from India. They did make one, sort of, “Mr. India”, back in 1987. I managed to find it on Youtube with English subtitles, and you know, it wasn’t that bad! The only superhero-ish thing was that he found a device which makes him invisible, which he (a humble violin teacher/orphanage owner) uses to defeat an evil would-be overlord. The special effects were pretty poor, even for 1987, but the story was actually pretty good.
One of things that’s great about Joe’s blog, in this case the Supermovie club, is that I find it encourages me to try things like these movies that I never would have normally.
I had this movie on in the background while working in my lab….I just had a hard time with the whole concept of Condorman, while when I hear the word condor, in my head I see a beautiful bird with a large wingspan. But while watching this movie I would hear the word condor or condorman and only see Foghorn Leghorn…my brain couldnt get past that point.
And I think I missed part of it while I was working….Michael Crawford was in the movie, I thought it was a musical??? I must have missed the flashy dance number…. 🙁
I need a Condor suit. It would get MY economy off the ground.
pouringmyartout: Funniest post of the day!
Cookie,
“You will curse the day you did not do all that the Phantom asked of you… there are worse things than a shattered chandellier.”
Sorry, I just saw the 25th anniversary of Phantom of the Opera last night, and am a big fan of Michael Crawford.
Hi Joe I know it has been awhile but I have a question for you, you said you saw Jack & Sam together in your AU what about Daniel & Vala are they together in your AU or your mind? and sorry about your dog I went through that last year with my big dog now my little dog isn’t doing so well.
@ pouringmyartout – 😆 Considering the guy’s name is Woody, it would have been quite appropriate! 😉
das
Cookie, darlin,’ that was great! You definitely don’t get paid well enough, and should renegotiate your contract. How do you prefer your macarons? 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/6ohf6ak
I stuck to the rules of the SHMOTWC, this is not a superhero movie therefore I didn’t watch it. Phew…. it looks like an absolute stinker. I’m def in for Supes III…