THE AISLE SEAT - "FLUBBER"

by Mike McGranaghan

I knew that Flubber was in trouble within the first five minutes. Robin Williams plays Dr. Phillip Brainard in this remake of The Absent-Minded Professor. Now, I realize that he's supposed to be oblivious, but the film asks us to believe that Brainard - a physics prof - could walk into the wrong classroom and begin a lecture, failing to notice that all the students are all sitting in front of easels while two nude models pose at the front of the class. The guy isn't absent-minded - he's an idiot. But then again, Flubber is an idiotic movie, a remake that nobody was clamoring for.

Among the many problems here is that the plot is all over the map. You have: 1.) Brainard's attempt to win back his fiancee after stranding her at the altar not once but three times; 2.) Brainard's former partner, who wants to steal all the doctor's inventions and his girlfriend; 3.) a flying robot named Weebo who is secretly in love with Brainard, even though Weebo is a machine; 4.) a snooty rich kid whose father tries to buy his son good grades at school; 5.) two inept criminals hired by the kid's father to intimidate Brainard; and 6.) the invention of flubber, the so-called "flying rubber" that exerts a walloping reaction for every bit of energy it is given.

Those are a lot of elements to stuff into a 95-minute movie. And because Flubber was written by John Hughes (Home Alone), every single one of those elements allows for someone to get bopped on the head, knocked on his back, or generally beaten around. Hughes used to be a terrific writer of insightful adolescent stories (The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink) and hilariously touching adult comedies (Planes, Trains & Automobiles, She's Having a Baby). But since hitting the formula jackpot with Home Alone, he seems incapable of writing anything else. Even his trademark sentimentality has become manufactured. Consider the scripts he's written in the last few years: three Home Alone movies, 101 Dalmatians, Career Opportunities, Dennis the Menace, Flubber. All have an overload of slapstick violence inflicted upon one or more inept criminals. There are only so many times you can see someone suffer a groin injury before it stops being funny (and for me that time has long since passed).

The situation is not improved here. Because the flubber is capable of lightning-fast speed, we are treated to all kinds of flubber-related injuries. At one point, I quietly counted 3-2-1 to myself. Just as I finished counting, one of the bad guys got bonked on the head with a bowling ball. That's how predictable it is. This isn't even good slapstick; you can guess with pinpoint accuracy the exact moment when someone will get hit on the head.

I suppose that Flubber could have been more tolerable if I'd cared about any of the characters, but I didn't. Even Phillip Brainard was dull to me, partly because of miscasting. Having Robin Williams play an oblivious professor is a big mistake - is there a more alert actor anywhere in the movies? Williams constantly seems ready to break free, only to remember that he's not allowed to. His hyper-awareness is directly at odds with Brainard's dim streak. The actor has been in some bad movies before, but rarely has he seemed so bored by his own role.

Not even the inventions are interesting. One of them especially bothered me, and that's the "character" of Weebo. The robot has a tiny TV screen built into its head; film clips run on the screen to illustrate Weebo's "emotions." For one thing, the device is overused, as the director keeps cutting away to reaction shots of the robot. For another, the darn thing seems to show an awful lot of clips from Disney cartoons. While I understand that the rights to these cartoons were easy to get (since Disney is also releasing Flubber), I felt like I was watching a commercial for Disney home video. The message seems to be: "Hey, kids, have Mom and Dad buy you Weebo's favorite cartoons after the movie!"

I only laughed twice at Flubber, and neither of the things I laughed at was particularly funny. At a basketball game (which he has rigged by putting flubber on the players' shoes), Brainard blows an air horn right into his rival's ear. I laughed not because I find auditory injury amusing, but because of actor Christopher McDonald's facial expression. Later, there's a squirt gun incident that was just dopey enough to make me chuckle. And I must admit that on a technical level, the special effects are interesting. There is an extended flubber musical number that - while it has zero to do with the plot - is a marvel of special effects technique.

Those are (very) small pleasures in a very unpleasant movie. A lot of the humor here is cruel, especially a running gag in which a scared little boy is repeatedly traumatized by the sight of Brainard's inventions. Perhaps Hughes would like to pay that kid's therapy bill someday. Flubber is the kind of movie that gets it all wrong. Given the light-hearted subject matter, this should be a sweet, funny family comedy. Instead, it's a nasty, unfunny train-wreck of a movie.

( 1/2 out of four)

Flubber is rated PG for comic violence. The running time is 95 minutes.