If you had asked me last week, my thoughts on 1997’s Flubber, I probably would have told you that it was a pretty good and fun family movie. However, thanks to Disney Plus, I watched Flubber for what must be the first time in 20 years or so, and this movie was nowhere near as good as I remembered it being. I actually found it kind of boring if I am being brutally honest. Which kind of sucked as I had some fond memories of this as I remember seeing it with friends during my teenage years.
Where to Watch Flubber
Flubber was released on November 26, 1997. You can stream the film from a Disney Plus or other digital platforms such as Amazon Prime or Apple TV.
The Movie Review
As the movie started, I was pretty excited to watch it again after all these years. I had actually gone all these years without realizing that John Hughes had a hand in the script and that Danny Elfman did the music! That, along with a leading role for Robin Williams and a solid supporting cast, should have been enough to make me, at the very least, still like and appreciate the movie, but that was not the case.
Is Flubber Still Worth Watching Today?
To this day, I have still not seen the movie that Flubber is a remake of, 1961’s The Absent Minded Professor, but I kind of want to now to see if it has held up better than Flubber. Look, this is 90s manic Robin Williams doing what he always did and what we loved him for; however, there is just a real lack of substance and character here, as it feels like the movie is trying to get by on its special effects and slapstick humor.
Plot Overview of Flubber (1997)
Robin Williams plays the role of Professor Brainard, who works for a less than great university. Brainard is a bit of a scatterbrain; he has missed his wedding twice, and his lab is a total mess. However, he has a brilliant mind and he has a good heart; he is pretty much what you would imagine Robin Williams playing a professor would be like.
While working hard to try and help the university make some money so that they can stay open, Brainard accidentally invents something that serves as a source of energy and is super bouncy and also sentient, and he calls this Flubber. The most fun thing about the science work that Brainard does is that he has a robot/AI helper called Weebo who also has the hots for him.
There is a basketball game with high stakes, so Brainard decides to see if the Flubber could help the school’s terrible basketball game, which it does. We then have someone trying to steal the Flubber and take down Brainard’s university and…. Look, this movie is just pretty boring. It is more focused on Robin Williams’ acting, manic and terrible slapstick humor, than it is on telling a good story. To be fair, Robin Williams is very likable and fun in the role, but what he has to work with here is paper-thin.
Why Flubber May Disappoint on a Rewatch
Like many mid to late 90s movies, the CGI special effects in Flubber have aged very poorly; they look so fake and cheesy, but instead of being so bad that they are good, they are just bad. I kind of wish I had gotten my son to watch this when he was much younger to see if Flubber is something that younger kids could still like. For me, this was a real bummer to watch, as I do remember liking this back when I first saw it.
