Fun, But By No Means Good: Flubber Fizzles!

The Good: Moments of performance and direction
The Bad: Utterly predictable, Simplistic character arcs, Erratic execution of special effects
The Basics: Flubber is a flop of a family film, despite having an impressive cast.


As the world copes with the suicide of Robin Williams, many of us are finding solace in watching his works. For me, that means rewatching films of his that impressed me, like The Fisher King (reviewed here!); for my wife, it means revisiting the films that delighted her in her childhood. It was she who wanted to watch Flubber, which I had never seen. While I was suitably pleased with the quality of the cast, Flubber is a ridiculous movie that sacrifices most of its moments of merit in order to be family-friendly. The humor is slapstick, the plot and character arcs are thoroughly predictable and the direction is so sloppy in relation to the special effects that only a child will not notice.

Flubber is a Disney live-action film that trades on simplicity and a sense of movement that is more significant than anything in the movie is substantive. As a result, the film features a villain who is adversarial for the sake of being antagonistic, an utterly unrealistic savior (in the form of big business!), and human relationships that are so poorly-conceived as to border on the ridiculous. Despite its many faults, Flubber is fun and easy-to-watch, is more than can be said for some of Robin Williams’s other films geared toward children.

Professor Philip Brainard is such an absentminded professor that he has missed his wedding to Dr. Sara Jean Reynolds two times before. While he promises not to miss it a third time (this time planned to be a big event purposely so he might remember it), Brainard’s floating robot, Weebo (who does all of his scheduling) fails to remind him of it the night before. As a result, the next day Brainard’s experiments in trying to create a sustainable power supply explode and distract him long enough to miss his own wedding. In the process, Brainard inadvertently creates a semi-conscious goo that is exceptionally elastic and has the potential to be used for an unlimited power supply.

But Brainard’s discovery does not solve all of his problems. Instead, Dr. Reynolds is wooed by Brainard’s competitor at the college, Wilson Croft, and the college is due to be shut down due to the machinations of Chester Hoenicker. To try to thwart both, Brainard uses the flubber to help the basketball team thwart their rivals – which costs Hoenicker quite a bit of money and helps Reynolds win a bet against Croft. While Hoenicker sends goons to steal the flubber, Brainard illustrates its uses to Reynolds and together the two work to save the university.

The flubber is a bright green goo that moves on its own and causes anything to which it is attached to bounce in violation of all of the traditional laws of physics. The creation serves as an excuse to have characters like the basketball players bounce across the court in a single leap or bounce back when they fall on their butts. Brainard uses the flubber to make his car fly and that becomes the method by which he and Dr. Reynolds figure out a way to earn enough money to save the college.

The character arcs in Flubber are painfully predictable. Brainard is set up as such an unfocused genius at the outset that any sort of wholesale change to the character in the course of the film would be unrealistic. As a result, much of the character development in Flubber is focused on how the other characters interact with him. Croft is a generic adversary for Brainard in both the personal and professional arena. Croft somehow has survived at the college long enough to live in Brainard’s shadow and steal some of his prior discoveries . . . without ever being reprimanded for it. Similarly, Croft only seems to have any potential for a relationship with Reynolds by the fact that he shows up. Reynolds seems not at all interested in him, but his advances are met with something other than indifference once Brainard misses their third wedding attempt.

While I am always thrilled to see Wil Wheaton in any of his post-Star Trek: The Next Generation roles, his part as Bennett Hoenicker is a distracting enemy that is essentially a third goon from his father. Wheaton’s role is entirely unnecessary and it interfaces poorly with Brainard’s storyline. At least Clancy Brown and Ted Levine might be relegated to the roles of Hoenicker’s goons, but at least they are supposed to be somewhat generic thugs: the addition of a son for Chester adds nothing to the story. Robin Williams and Marcia Gay Harden have fine on-screen chemistry, even if they are not a great cinematic couple.

Flubber makes decent use of Robin Williams’s manic physical acting style, but director Les Mayfield is sloppy with the special effects. The flubber moves at an incredible speed and Mayfield does not make sure to line up the eyelines of Williams or most of the other characters. As a result, most of the characters are not looking anywhere near the flubber or flubber-affected characters when they are bouncing around.

The result is that Flubber is a disappointing film that is utterly forgettable even though it is not unenjoyable while it is on.

For other Disney live-action works, please check out my reviews of:
Saving Mr. Banks
The Lone Ranger
Oz The Great And Powerful
The Odd Life Of Timothy Green
John Carter
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Tron: Legacy
Oceans
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time
Alice In Wonderland
Old Dogs
G-Force
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement
The Princess Diaries
Tron

2.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Bad Child Of The ‘80’s! The Breakfast Club Left Me Unimpressed.

The Good: Decent acting, Great character studies
The Bad: Boring plot, Moments that pull focus/melodramatic aspects.
The Basics: The Breakfast Club is rightfully an original and a classic, but it is not as tight or compelling when viewed objectively.


On Thanksgiving Eve, my wife’s family arrived and I was suddenly conscripted to find a copy of The Breakfast Club. For some reason, they were obsessing on seeing The Breakfast Club as soon as they arrived and, after making the popcorn, I hunted down a copy at a local video rental chain. I had only seen The Breakfast Club once, back in the day . . . in the ‘80’s. The Breakfast Club is one of the quintessential 1980’s film and after watching it with them, I felt somewhat jaded. The Breakfast Club was good, but despite admiring the level of character explored throughout it, it is not as tight or interesting a film as many people made it out to me for the last twenty years.

The Breakfast Club is like Twelve Angry Men, but without a point. Twelve Angry Men is a taut character study that explores a jury and how people’s ideas and backstories influence their interpretation of facts in a case as they deliberate. The Breakfast Club does not actually have a set purpose, it is about an experience and, perhaps it is my distance from high school, but it is not even a terribly interesting shared experience.

Andrew, Brian, Bender (John), Claire, and Allison are sentenced to a Saturday detention at Shermer High School where they are at the mercy of Vice Principal Richard Vernon. Andrew is a jock with a strong sense of ethics, Brian is a quiet, brainy kid, and Claire is the archetypal prom queen and daddy’s girl. John Bender is an angry outsider and Allison starts as a weird, quiet girl whose only clear trait is that she steals whatever is within arm’s reach. After Vernon locks them in and assigns them to write an essay about who each of them is, John removes a screw from the door, which allows them to have a bit of privacy.

Without being under the close guard of Vernon, the five students talk with one another and bond over their youthful, angst and traumas.

The Breakfast Club is basically five young people sitting around and talking with one another. The whole movie is essentially a slow character study that illustrates how each of the young people lowers their barriers. Or, at times, it’s a stupid exploration of teen peer pressure where a bunch of people who claim to be individuals who are from all sorts of different walks of life sit around bitching about their parents and smoking pot.

The characters, outside voiding all sense of originality and independence from one another by doing all the same things as one another for the day, are interesting and well developed. Writer and director John Hughes has a strong sense of psychological motivation and he seems to understand that most young people are damaged by expectations placed on them by their parents. That works in The Breakfast Club and while Judd Nelson’s John Bender dominates most of the beginning of the film, all of the characters have a chance to present their voice and the film even digresses to have Vernon and the janitor, Carl, have some moments together.

The acting in The Breakfast Club is good from the mostly-young cast. In fact, there was only one moment when Molly Ringwald’s performance seems melodramatic and over the top. The rest of the time, cast members like Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall (Brian) and especially Emilio Estevez portray their “types” exceptionally well. Estevez is a convincing jock and Hall plays the quiet, self-tormented overachiever quite proficiently. Ally Sheedy does weird wonderfully (probably how she ended up with the recurring gig on Psych!) and Molly Ringwald is the embodiment of the archetype of the teen princess.

But, despite some wonderful lines and understanding better a few more references than I recalled from the first time I saw it, The Breakfast Club left me feeling bored. I waited for any of the students to follow their own dreams and ambitions instead of just falling in line with whatever one of the two Alphas (or Claire using her sex appeal, as she does on Brian near the film’s end) demands. The Breakfast Club is good, but it is far more meaningful to those who has a strong nostalgia for high school in the 1980s. That’s just not me.

For other works with Anthony Michael Hall, check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight
Edward Scissorhands

6/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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