Robin Williams plays Professor Philip Brainard, a man so lost in his work that he has missed two wedding dates with his fiancée, college president Sara Jean Reynolds, played by Marcia Gay Harden. In Flubber, the 1997 remake of The Absent-Minded Professor, Brainard finally captures a green, elastic substance he calls “flubber” — and the film captures almost nothing else.
Trailer, via filmbiblotekket.
The Absent-Minded Formula
John Hughes and Bill Walsh wrote the script, and Les Mayfield directed. The setup is simple: Brainard needs a new energy source to save Medfield College, his assistant Weebo is secretly in love with him, and his rival Wilson Croft is plotting to steal both his ideas and his bride. The film wants to be a family comedy with a soft science fiction edge, but the jokes land flat and the stakes feel thin.
The tagline promises viewers can catch flubber if they can. The film itself rarely manages to catch even its own jokes.
What Works and What Doesn’t
Robin Williams carries the film. His performance as the scatterbrained professor is the reason anyone stays through the runtime. The supporting cast — Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher McDonald, Raymond J. Barry, Clancy Brown, Ted Levine and Wil Wheaton — are competent, but they are buried under a script that gives them little to do beyond react to Williams’ antics.
The visual effects for flubber are dated by 1997 standards. The substance is elastic and full of energy, but the animation looks cheap and the timing feels off. The film’s attempts at slapstick comedy fall apart whenever the action leaves the lab and enters the street.
The story drags in stretches, and the pacing suffers from a runtime that is too fast for its own ambition. By the time Brainard misses his third wedding, the film has spent so much time explaining the premise that the payoff loses its force.
The Flaws Add Up
The film fails in nearly every category:
- Story — the plot is thin and repetitive, with the same jokes told multiple times across the runtime.
- Script — the dialogue is uneven, with some lines landing and others falling flat.
- Special effects — the flubber effects look dated and poorly timed.
- Direction — Mayfield directs without much flair, letting the material sink under its own weight.
- Cast chemistry — the actors are solid individually but rarely get room to build genuine rapport.
The film’s best moments come when Williams is left alone to improvise. The worst moments come when the script forces him into a scene that has no purpose beyond moving the plot forward.
A Box Office Success That Missed Its Mark
Despite the poor reception, Flubber was a commercial success, grossing $178 million worldwide. That number is a strange footnote to a film that critics dismissed at the time.
The film’s failure is not a surprise. It is a predictable one. A remake built around a silly premise, a dated visual effect and a lead actor whose performance holds the whole thing together.
Flubber is not a bad film in the way that a bad film is entertaining. It is a film that never quite figures out what it wants to be — a children’s comedy, a romance, a science fiction adventure — and settles for being none of them well. The result is a movie that is pleasant in small doses but exhausting in full.
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