11.26.97 00:12:17
Remake results in a flick that's a flub
Flubber

** (out of five)

Starring Robin Williams, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher McDonald, Raymond J. Barry, Clancy Brown, Ted Levine, Will Wheaton. A Walt Disney picture written by John Hughes and Bill Walsh, directed by Les Mayfield. At the East Providence, Harbour Mall, Lincoln Mall, North Dartmouth Mall, Showcase North Attleboro, Silver City, Starcase, Tri-Boro, Warwick Mall, Westerly and Woonsocket cinemas. Rated PG, contains violence. Running time: 92 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

Disney has waved its magic wand at its delightfully airy 1961 fantasy The Absent-Minded Professor, rechristening it Flubber and adding color, better special effects and Robin Williams.

Alas, the results are less than magical. Downright leaden in fact. This Flubber, which is the name of the anti-gravity flying rubber invented by an eccentric college professor who is so dizzy that he has left his bride at the altar three times, doesn't fly.

Odd, because because most of the basic elements of the original are intact, despite a "new'' script by Home Alone's John Hughes and Bill Walsh, who wrote the script for The Absent-Minded Professor. But the formula has been remixed and flubbed.

Flubber runs only 90 minutes, but it seems like three hours.

Part of the problem lies with Williams. Whereas Fred MacMurray was earnest and down to earth and real in the original film, Williams makes Prof. Philip Brainard an eccentric pixie, overplaying every scene. "Look how cute I can be,'' is the message. His Professor Brainard comes across as an annoying dolt rather than a genius so caught up in his work that he doesn't have time to worry about life's details. One never pulls for him. His inanities make us feel that he deserves the problems he gets.

Instead of a fluffy dog for a companion, Flubber hooks up the professor with a flying yellow computer named Weebo, which looks a bit like -- and has all the charm of -- a smokeless ashtray. Worse, Weebo has a cloying, wimpy voice by Jodi Benson, who did the vocals for Arial, Disney's Little Mermaid. Bring back the dog, which couldn't talk, but at least had a personality.

Instead of the charming Model T that originally took flight over the town of Medfield when MacMurray's Professor Brainard got behind the wheel, Williams's professor soars overhead in a 1963 red Thunderbird convertible. It's a beautiful car, but it just can't muster the same whimsicality.

The plot revolves around Professor Brainard's discovery of flubber and his attempts to use it to save financially strapped Medfield College, which is about to be foreclosed upon by its major moneylender. Professor Brainard has flunked the wealthy moneylender's son, and the man is distressed.

The professor is also trying to salvage his romance with his thrice-abandoned fiancee (Marcia Gay Harden) and move her away from the clutches of his adversary (Christopher McDonald), who has made a career of stealing the professor's best ideas and now wants to steal his girl. McDonald plays it, as does Raymond J. Barry as the moneylender, as a one-note villain.

Even the film's big centerpiece extravaganza, a basketball game in which the Medfield players are outfitted with flubberized shoes and soar over their taller opponents, has been overproduced and lacks spontaneity. The sequence, and much of the film, seems manufactured, de-energized and at best directed in a workmanlike style by Les Mayfield, whose last film was the underrated remake of Miracle on 34th Street, also with a script by Hughes.

The best thing about Flubber is flubber, green goo which, because it can adapt to any shape, sometimes sits up in the palm of the professor's hand like a tiny person and coos. Flubber's most entertaining scene is a flubberized take-off on a Carmen Miranda-style South American musical number, with flubber taking the part of everything from the dancers to the conga drums. Too bad the filmmakers didn't concentrate more on flubber and leave out some of the saccharine stuff.

Except for that genuinely magical and lighthearted sequence, better you should rent a copy of the black-and-white original. Flubber is just a case of not making them like they used to.