Flubber follows a scatty-brained college professor and inventor, played by Robin Williams, who is on the brink of a world-changing breakthrough. Much to the annoyance of his fiancée, he misses their third (THIRD!) failed wedding attempt to finally unlock the last piece of the puzzle, and creating a green, rubbery substance with near limitless bounciness as a result. The rest of the movie follows this professor as he explores the possibilities of this substance, tries to sell it off to keep their financially failing college afloat, and tries to win his wife-to-be back from a rival scientist. All of this involves rigging a college basketball game, making a flying car, and fighting off greedy businessmen.
As plots go, Flubber is pretty diabolical. Nothing in this movie seems to make sense. This dude slaves away to make this magical substance that'll change the world, when he already seems to have mastered robotics even beyond today's standards, twenty-three years later. The college basketball team is made up entirely of 5' nerds, as if the college doesn't have its own sports division, and apparently science majors make better basketball players than artists? The greedy businessman has a chip on his shoulder because his spoiled son wasn't allowed on said basketball team because his grades weren't good enough, but he was clearly more athletic than anyone on that team, so I'm not really sure what relevance his bad grades had. And the whole romance subplot? How has their relationship functioned up to this point? I get it's Disney in the 90s and seeing two characters cohabiting before marriage was a big no-no, but this guy misses THREE of his own weddings to the same woman. At the end he gets one of his robots to stand in for him for their fourth attempt while he continues sciencing at home. How has she not got to the point of physically dragging him to the altar yet? In a very heartfelt speech, Robin Williams explains how his love for this woman is what makes him so scatterbrained, but surely that can't apply to actually marrying her? Hey darling, I just love you so much I can't think and forget what I'm doing, including how much I love you...?
But seriously, you're not watching Flubber for its plot. This is a live-action cartoon for kids. As fun as writing that rant out was, it's totally irrelevant to the movie's aim, which is to give kids a good laugh. Flubber's humour is almost entirely slapstick, with all manner of characters getting hit in the face with various items, over and over and over. There are a few more nuanced moments of humour, but they're never quite enough to keep the adults entertained. I can confirm my seven year old found it as gut-bustingly hilarious as I did twenty years ago though, so it absolutely hits its mark.
And Flubber isn't an entirely soulless affair either, with most of its character and charm coming from the secretary-type robot Weebo. In fact you could argue this character gets the most development. She spends her nights imagining herself as a human, creates pastiche people out of magazine clippings, turns them into holograms, and then imagines seducing the professor with them. She's a lovestruck A.I. who realises that to make the target of her affections happy, she's going to have to let him go. All of this makes Weebo the most charming, sympathetic, and relatable character in the whole movie, and means her eventual fate hits the heartstrings pretty hard. For a movie devoid of sensible plotting and slapstick humour to have genuine emotional investment in a characters death is a testament to how great that character is.
Flubber is not a great movie. Even for kids there are better movies out there; funnier movies, more meaningful movies, more important movies, more memorable movies. But Flubber achieves everything it set out to do and even had a couple of surprises to boot. It hasn't aged well at all, coming from an age when live-action cartoons actually kind of worked, but it is inventive and has some classic Robin Williams moments. My son gave it a gut-busting 8/10. I err more critically and give it a better-than-average 6/10.
As plots go, Flubber is pretty diabolical. Nothing in this movie seems to make sense. This dude slaves away to make this magical substance that'll change the world, when he already seems to have mastered robotics even beyond today's standards, twenty-three years later. The college basketball team is made up entirely of 5' nerds, as if the college doesn't have its own sports division, and apparently science majors make better basketball players than artists? The greedy businessman has a chip on his shoulder because his spoiled son wasn't allowed on said basketball team because his grades weren't good enough, but he was clearly more athletic than anyone on that team, so I'm not really sure what relevance his bad grades had. And the whole romance subplot? How has their relationship functioned up to this point? I get it's Disney in the 90s and seeing two characters cohabiting before marriage was a big no-no, but this guy misses THREE of his own weddings to the same woman. At the end he gets one of his robots to stand in for him for their fourth attempt while he continues sciencing at home. How has she not got to the point of physically dragging him to the altar yet? In a very heartfelt speech, Robin Williams explains how his love for this woman is what makes him so scatterbrained, but surely that can't apply to actually marrying her? Hey darling, I just love you so much I can't think and forget what I'm doing, including how much I love you...?
But seriously, you're not watching Flubber for its plot. This is a live-action cartoon for kids. As fun as writing that rant out was, it's totally irrelevant to the movie's aim, which is to give kids a good laugh. Flubber's humour is almost entirely slapstick, with all manner of characters getting hit in the face with various items, over and over and over. There are a few more nuanced moments of humour, but they're never quite enough to keep the adults entertained. I can confirm my seven year old found it as gut-bustingly hilarious as I did twenty years ago though, so it absolutely hits its mark.
And Flubber isn't an entirely soulless affair either, with most of its character and charm coming from the secretary-type robot Weebo. In fact you could argue this character gets the most development. She spends her nights imagining herself as a human, creates pastiche people out of magazine clippings, turns them into holograms, and then imagines seducing the professor with them. She's a lovestruck A.I. who realises that to make the target of her affections happy, she's going to have to let him go. All of this makes Weebo the most charming, sympathetic, and relatable character in the whole movie, and means her eventual fate hits the heartstrings pretty hard. For a movie devoid of sensible plotting and slapstick humour to have genuine emotional investment in a characters death is a testament to how great that character is.
Flubber is not a great movie. Even for kids there are better movies out there; funnier movies, more meaningful movies, more important movies, more memorable movies. But Flubber achieves everything it set out to do and even had a couple of surprises to boot. It hasn't aged well at all, coming from an age when live-action cartoons actually kind of worked, but it is inventive and has some classic Robin Williams moments. My son gave it a gut-busting 8/10. I err more critically and give it a better-than-average 6/10.