By Geno McGahee
Robin Williams is impossible not to like, but his comedy can be an acquired taste. I speak highly of Williams often but my focus is always on one movie, MRS. DOUBTFIRE. That movie was so tremendous that I tend not to think about the rest of the movies that he’s done and how terrible they truly are. The comedy of Williams isn’t very funny for the most part either, as he relies on physical comedy and funny faces. Sometimes it can work but, for the most part, I have a hard time finding any amusement from it.
My spree of1990’s live action Disney films continues with FLUBBER, which broke about even at the box office. It seems that Disney was really banking on this one being a big hit and I remember the CGI flubber thing being showcased in advertisements. CGI was a tool that was being used more and more at this time and in FLUBBER, they decided to use it a lot.
Brainard (Williams) is an absent-minded professor that keeps forgetting to attend his wedding to Sara (Marcia Gay Harden). He gets tied up too much in his work. When he misses the third ceremony, another professor, Croft (Christopher McDonald) moves in and does it with a lot of bravado. When Christopher McDonald is involved in a film, you know you’ll get something good out of it and when he’s on the screen, the movie is a lot of fun.
There’s an annoying female-voiced robot that flies around Brainard’s house named Weebo (Jodi Benson). They were probably assuming the audience would love this character as it played out reactions through old Disney films on her little screen, but it wasn’t good. I hated that character and the interactions between Williams and the CGI robot seemed off.
With John Hughes being one of the writers, having some HOME ALONE stuff in here is not a surprise. Having John Hughes being one of the writers and this film sucking horse balls was a surprise. Chester (Raymond J. Barry) is a bad rich man that is trying to shut down the college that Brainard works at and he turns it up when he finds out that Brainard is failing his son.
Chester sends two goons, Smith (Clancy Brown) and Wesson (Ted Levine), to Brainard’s home to rough him up but they stumble upon him experimenting with Flubber. This leads to bouncing bowling balls and golf balls hitting the bumbling duo over and over again. This is right out of HOME ALONE. I don’t blame the producers. People love that shit. I love that shit. HOME ALONE was the bomb.
In one of the most difficult scenes to get through, Brainard fixes a basketball game by adding Flubber to the feet of all the players to give his team an advantage. I swear this scene was 19 hours long. It just went on and on and didn’t add anything to the film, but the CGI guy probably insisted because he got to add some really bad stuff to the scene.
We get the final showdown with Brainard taking on Chester and Croft and it’s tough to get through. There are some laughs thanks to McDonald, but it can’t save the scene. I wish they used McDonald more in this film. Every time he is on the screen, he’s funny.
I want to mention that I fucking hated the never-ending “Flubber Mambo” scene. I don’t know what I’d rather sit through again, this shit or the basketball scene. They were so proud of the dancing Flubber scene that they mentioned it in the opening credits. It blew.
The enjoyment of FLUBBER will depend on the enjoyment of the physical humor of Robin Williams. If you find Robin Williams making funny faces and throwing himself around, you may enjoy this. I don’t find that shit funny at all and this film just drags on with a few laughs here and there.
I am pretty shocked that John Hughes is part of this, but he was only a part of it…so maybe the good stuff was his and the rest of the shit, 80% of this film, wasn’t.
They missed humor opportunities here as well. Williams does not react normally when he gets hurt. For example, he puts Flubber in his back pocket to show that he will bounce back up as he falls out of a window. As he drops, the Flubber jumps out and he lands hard on the ground, but he doesn’t sell it. He is just there smiling. If he was there moaning or screaming in pain, that would have been a much funnier scene and that goes for a lot of the hits he takes in this film.
When it comes to live action 1990’s Disney films, you can do worse than this, but this one isn’t very good. The potential was there for this one but it stunk it up.
