FLUBBER

US, 1997, 93 minutes, Colour.
Robin Williams, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher Mac Donald, Ted Levine, Clancy Brown, Raymond J.Barry, Wil Wheaton, Edie Mc Clurg.
Directed by Les Mayfield.


This is a re-make of Disney's popular 1960s film, The Absent- Minded Professor, with Fred Mac Murray. In the 90s, Robin Williams is more frantic and the special effects more elaborate and zanier. Robin Williams appeared in Good Will Hunting at this time and won an Academy Award for best Supporting Actor. Marcia Gay Harden won an Oscar in 2000 for Pollack.

Special effects had improved since the 1960s and there are all kinds of humorous situations, including bouncing golf balls and basketballs hitting mock goons, the car flying through the air, flubber on the shoes of basketball players who win a game.

Robin Williams brings some humanity to his role, especially his love for Sarah – although she has been left at the altar three times. Christopher McDonald? plays and academic villain. Raymond J.Barry is a benefactor of the University, wanting his son to get into Harvard, and the comic goons are played well by Ted Levine and Clancy Brown.

Les Mayfield also directed The Mighty Ducks, Miracle on 34th Street, Blue Streak. The screenplay was co-written by John Hughes, best known for such comedy is as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.

1. Disney in the 1960s, in the 1990s? Fred Mac Murray in the past, Robin Williams in the 1990s?

2. The verve of the 1990s version, comic, slapstick, verbal humour, family entertainment?

3. The University, offices, laboratories, experiments? The church and the wedding? The musical score, the songs? The humour of having so many television clips to comment on the action?

4. The special effects, the experiments, flubber itself, balance, hitting the thugs with the balls, the car flying, the basketball match?

5. Robin Williams as Philip, absent-minded, his computer companion and their conversation? Sarah, love, the reminder of the wedding, the being left at the church? Wilson as his rival? His involvement in experiments, his robot against the wedding, the explosion, the forming of flubber, his forgetting the wedding?

6. Sarah, nice, the work at the University, left at the church twice, the dress fitting, talking with her friend, with Philip? Her reaction to his forgetting, leaving the church, Wilson to escort her? Philip visiting the office, her not wanting explanations? No excuses?

7. Wilson, the rival, taking Philip’s ideas, his eye on Sarah, at the church, the discussions with Philip, the threats, giving Sarah the lift? His smug smile?

8. The flubber, its capacity for flying? The benefactor wanting to steal the flubber? The deals with Philip? His thugs, watching, the slapstick of their being hit with the balls? His son, failing, Philip and his principles, the pressure? The confrontation, no deal?

9. Philip, flying with the car, with his robot companion, through the skies, outside the window, taking Sarah for a ride?

10. Wilson, the benefactor, the flubber and the causing of mayhem, Wilson swallowing it and eliminating it?

11. The humour of the child, the fear of the dark, looking out the windows, everything appearing at the windows, his nightmare on the plane?

12. Happy ending, love and progress with the flubber?