Flubber

Release Date: November 26, 1997

Watch Date: November 6 – November 11, 2024

“Brilliant but befuddled Professor Philip Brainard (Robin Williams) is on the brink of inventing a revolutionary energy source…and missing his wedding to Dr. Sara Jean Reynolds (Marcia Gay Harden), president of financially challenged Medfield College, for the third time. When Phillip experiments with his own theory, he instead creates Flubber, a miraculous elastic goo. Phillip and Weebo, his flying cyber sidekick, soon discover that when Flubber is applied to anything, it can bounce super high and fast. But is Flubber good enough to win back Sara and save Medfield from its financial problems?”

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   This movie took forever for us to watch and I don’t really have a good reason for it, because both Bob and myself have really good memories of watching this movie as kids, and also Bob loves Robin Williams almost more than I think he loves me, so normally he doesn’t pick a Robin Williams movie unless he’s pretty sure we can watch it all in one sitting. I could say it was work, and school, and our kids not adjusting very well to daylight savings – and all of these things would be true, but I think it was a little more.

   Because, this movie is…eh?

   Robin Williams is Robin Williams in it, that is to say he has great comedic timing, he can deliver an emotional moment. He is the magical man that he always is. But the rest of the cast, the rest of the plot, the rest of the movie as a whole is just…eh.

   It is, having now watched the original ‘Absent-Minded Professor’, a true remake. It modernizes the love story, and the female character. It hits all the same moments as the original but brings a 90s flair to it (which as a child of the 90s is not always a bad thing). But it just doesn’t feel like it has as much heart. Flubber as a character doesn’t make much sense, and it has a whole sequence that is really pointless. I don’t really like Weebo because the way she acts doesn’t always make a lot of sense.

   Besides this, they kind of make the emotional heart of this movie feel hollow. Robin Williams gives this big speech that he’s not absent-minded for any other reason than love, but that is patently untrue. Because he’s not absent-minded while focused on Sara, though you could argue that he is trying to save the school that is clearly her passion. Okay, fine. But then, to remember his own wedding at the end and still not bother to show up? Yea, you’re not absent-minded cause you love her, you’re just obsessed at that point and have messed up priorities. And if Sara is willing to accept that, cool, but, most people wouldn’t.

   The villains are just typical 90s villains. A rich guy who seems to be involved in some sort of criminal activity and two goons, but the bad guy leader doesn’t get to have as much personality as the original, and I kind of liked how the original villain was treated as a much more active participant, even in his comeuppance. Villains in the early 20th century just got to be more wacky in Disney movies.

   So all told, it’s not the strongest Disney movie in Robin Williams’ canon. But, does it still give me fond memories of my early years? Are there still moments that make me laugh? Yes to both of those. But, if I had to pick a Robin Williams movie, there’s better ones to pick – and based on the fact that I haven’t watched this movie since the early 00s at the latest, I clearly do.