Release Year: 1997 Rating: PG-13 Duration: 93 minutes Other Title: Disney's Flubber: The Absent Minded Professor Director: Les Mayfield Producer: John Hughes, Ricardo Mestres
synopsis
Remake of "The Absent-Minded Professor' finds Robin Williams concocting a physics-defying substance that may save his failing college. Uneven but good natured.
Professor Philip 'Phil' Brainard: I was just gonna, you know, grade my lunch, eat a few tests and hope for the best.
Martha George: [about the excitement of getting married] How do you hold it in?
Professor Philip 'Phil' Brainard: [thinking she meant waste] Well, like everybody else, Ruthie. I just cross my legs real tight.
Martha George: [gets a little tickled by that answer] I was talking about your excitement.
You can stop trying to figure out the worst film of the year right now. This is one of the most embarassing pieces of crap ever to emerge from the tired brain of John Hughes. It is simply the laziest script ever written, full of things that make absolutely no sense, refusing to even adhere to it's own sense of idiotic logic. It's the story of a professor who is trying to invent an anti-gravity polymer. He's so absent minded that he has missed his own wedding three times. His best pal is a little floating mechanical device with a video screen that flies around the house helping him out and giving him advice. Did you hear that? He has ALREADY INVENTED a device that can fly around of it's own accord, yet we're supposed to go EUREKA when he gets his car to fly. Are you insulted yet? Can you believe we're supposed to get involved with a man who is desperately trying to create something he has already created? John Hughes thinks we're idiots. Once flubber is invented, the film continues to violate every single rule of decent screenwriting. The flubber does all kinds of crazy things that have absolutlely nothing to do with the plot of the film. At one point, when no one is looking, the flubber breaks itself into hundreds of pieces and does an enormous Carmen Miranda musical number. How does a piece of FLying rUBBER know how to do this? WHY would a piece of FLying rUBBER do this? Who cares? The scene is there because it is there. Cut it out and the film doesn't change at all. Cut out just about every single scene where the flubber does something supposedly funny and it doesn't effect the plot at all. The first thing that the professor does with the flubber is put it on a golf ball. It bounces around his laboratory destroying everything in its path. What's the next thing the professor does? He puts the flubber on a bowling ball. We laugh in anticipation of the havoc it will wreak. We also learn that the professor isn't just absent minded, he's a moron. Who gives a damn what happens to this idiot? Later, his little floating mechanical pal gets smashed. What does he do? He cries. This is the single most embarrassing moment of Robin Williams carreer. He doesn't cry when his bride abandons him. He cries when his little toy breaks. A toy he built. A toy he can easily rebuild. I could go on and on but I won't. The film doesn't deserve analysis. It deserves immolation.
