FLUBBER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
It's pop quiz time. Who stars in FLUBBER, Disney's remake of its 1961 film THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR? Well, if you answered Robin Williams, you only get partial credit.
Although your answer may be technically correct, there is a small lovable, flying female robot named WEEBO, voiced by Jodi Benson from THE LITTLE MERMAID, who steals most of the scenes. That is, except for those with Flubber in them. Flubber, a cross between the Pillsbury Doughboy and a lump of green Jell-O, manages to steal the scenes from both of them with his antics. One minute he is shooting bowling balls into the sky, and the next he splits into a hundred pieces and starts doing a Copacabana-style synchronized dance routine. With the special visual effects by Douglas Smith, the Academy Award winner from INDEPENDENCE DAY, one could argue that Smith deserves equal billing with Williams.
The main storyline has our hero, a very absent minded but brilliant professor named Phillip Brainard (Williams), trying to cook up some magic substance in order to save his almost insolvent college. His home looks like inventor Wayne Szalinski's from HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS but with gadgets that work. Phillip is so forgetful that he forgets his wedding with Sara Jean Reynolds, played Marcia Gay Harden from THE SPITFIRE GRILL, for the third time. This provides an opportunity for a rival professor, Wilson Croft (Christopher McDonald), from another school to try to sweep her off her feet.
At this point our show has gone nowhere. But with the arrival of Phillip's invention of flying rubber, hence "Flubber," the movie takes off right along with the bouncing substance.
The script by John Hughes, who has done a host of good comedies with the best being FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, is loosely based on Bill Walsh's original script. With a young audience in mind, the humor places heavy reliance on physical comedy -- flying bowling balls and golf balls, for example, to knock out the goons. The way they use the Flubber substance is quite imaginative. They spray in on their bodies to create bouncing surfaces, put it on shoes to create super basketball jumpers and wipe it on their hands to create mile-a-minute dribblers. The substance should come with a warning label: Do not use internally. Wilson does so with disastrous results.
The spoken dialog is fairly lame. "I love you with every cell, with every atom," Phillip says about Sara in one of show's few mildly funny lines. "I love you on a subatomic level." Most of the show sticks, correctly, to the action for his laughs, and director Les Mayfield keeps a high energy level to the proceedings without going overboard.
One subplot deals with WEEBO's crush on Phillip. In addition to talking, she has a video screen that pops up so that she can show brief clips of old movies to illustrate her feelings. When WEEBO is angry, for example, she brings up a clip of Shirley Temple pouting with her hands on her hips. And when WEEBO comes to the rescue, she plays a Western with the cavalry arriving and bugles blaring. Rather than tiring of this gimmick, it actually grows on you as does WEEBO's adorable personality.
The bad guys are purely cartoonish, the type that get knocked down and then knocked down again. Their putative purpose is to attempt to steal the Flubber, but they are really there to be human punching bags.
In a minor but recurring subplot, a little boy keeps getting frightened of staying in his room at night. After his Dad assures him that his window is locked, all manner of mayhem breaks out on the other side of his window. Robin Williams, flying his Flubber-powered 1963 red Thunderbird convertible, even runs into the tree outside the kid's bedroom.
Evaluated as adult level humor, FLUBBER would have trouble measuring up. But as a kid's show, it delivers the goods with some riotously funny sequences. Finally, consider this modern miracle. FLUBBER is an outlandish kid's comedy without almost no bathroom humor. They don't make many movies like that anymore.
FLUBBER runs a quick 1:32. It is rated PG for cartoon mayhem and would be fine for all ages. My son Jeffrey and his friend Kerry, both 8, thought the show was "very funny." Kerry commented on how much she laughed, and Jeffrey talked about his favorite characters, WEEBO, Flubber, and the little kid. Jeffrey said he thought it was one of the best movies of the year.
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