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Monday, January 29, 2024

CONDORMAN (1981)

Laugh-free (yet laughable) attempt by Disney during the inept Ron Miller era* to start their very own PINK PANTHER franchise.  (Note the threat of a never-made sequel at the end.)   Poor Michael Crawford (think Dick Van Dyck doing Stan Laurel meets Peter Sellers) cold-cocked his film career with this one*, mugging like mad as a comic book artist posing as a spy to help Barbara Carrera give Ruskie boss Oliver Reed the slip and defect to the West.  Typical for Disney kiddie fare under Miller, the script lacks sense, craft or development, coming across with sheer contempt for a presumably indiscriminate audience of young mallers, parked at the multiplex while Mom shops.  Shot in Europe, at least production values are up a tad from Disney house style of the period, even Henry Mancini on the score.  (More wishful PINK PANTHER thinking.)  But the laugh's on them with Hank’s annoying Condorman fanfare repeating ad infinitum.  Director Charles Jarrott not at his worst (his infamous musical remake of LOST HORIZON/’73 holds its place), but still falls on his face trying to ape Blake Edwards’ masterly compound action slapstick.  And why bother with an animated Condorman who never shows up after the credit sequence?  Just Crawford in a silly costume.  (Oh, yeah, PINK PANTHER had animated credit sequences.)  One good gag in the whole pic: Crawford passing as a rich Arab oil tycoon disguised under Alec Guinness’s Fagin makeup from OLIVER TWIST/’48.  Must have been accidental.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Taking over post-Walt, son-in-law Miller was a college gridiron star with little aptitude for film.  Three years after this, Miller was out and Michael Eisner came in to save the studio.  In all Hollywood history, only 20th/Fox’s Spyros Skouras his clueless equal.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *A remarkably adept performer, Crawford reinvented himself to create the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in London and then on B’way.  But first, career transitioned playing BARNUM throughout the U.K.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/07/barnum-1986.html

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