Robin Williams' Hit Disney Sci-fi Movie Was A Remake Of A '60s Classic

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Disney threatening to swallow its own tail isn't anything new. Long before the Mouse House struck box office gold with a string of live-action remakes of its own animated movies in the 2010s, the studio spent the 1990s rebooting older non-animated titles from its library. It wasn't all bad, mind you, as many people feel Nancy Meyers' 1998 screwball-flavored "The Parent Trap" (a redo of Disney's 1961 film adaptation of the novel "Lisa and Lottie") is better than the movie that inspired it. However, something like 1997's "That Darn Cat" (another revamp of a '60s Disney flick based on a book) mostly came and went.

Then there was "Flubber," which the Mouse House released in between those two movies. A re-working of the studio's well-liked 1961 sci-fi comedy "The Absent-Minded Professor" (itself based on Samuel W. Taylor's short story "A Situation of Gravity"), the film starred Robin Williams as one Philip Brainard, a wayward professor whose new invention might just save his financially-downtrodden college. His creation? Flubber, a green goo with incredible kinetic energy that can just as readily be applied to heavyset objects (such as bowling balls) or even humans (!) to make them bounce around like springy rubber as it can allow cars to fly. Also, the Flubber is sentient, but it's better not to dwell on the ethical implications of that, much less the mechanics.

If you're waiting for me to tell you that "Flubber" is a good movie that's stood the test of time, well, I'm sorry to disappoint. But rather than merely dunk on the film like critics did in its day (see: its 24% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes), let's take a look at how it became a box office hit and remains a time capsule of '90s pop culture in general.

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The nostalgia cycle meant 1960s nostalgia was all the rage in the '90s, which explains why Disney suddenly flooded the market with remakes of that decade's movies at the time, "Flubber" among them. Aiding the cause, the studio released the film theatrically over the Thanksgiving holiday frame in 1997. There, it thrived as a family-friendly foil to the R-rated "Alien: Resurrection" and other movies targeting adults. (It helped that Disney had screwed over the picture's would-be competitor "Anastasia," too, but that's another story.)

Besides Robin Williams, the "Flubber" cast included Marcia Gay Harden as Sara Jean Reynolds (the president of Brainard's college and his fiancée ... whom he keeps absent-mindedly standing up at the altar) and Christopher McDonald as Brainard's ex-partner turned rival Wilson Croft. Indeed, there's no surer sign that you're watching a '90s flick than McDonald playing a total sleazeball (see also: "Thelma and Louise," "Happy Gilmore," etc.). And if that's not '90s enough, "Flubber" was written by John Hughes during the period where he was constantly repurposing the family comedy template that he himself established with his "Home Alone" script. Hence, "Flubber" goes heavy on the slapstick (even having someone expel Flubber from the wrong end) and gives McDonald's villain a pair of cartoonish goons played by the legendary Clancy Brown and Buffalo Bill from "The Silence of the Lambs," i.e. Ted Levine.

Notably, "Flubber" was the second live-action remake that Hughes wrote for the Mouse House after 1996's "101 Dalmatians," another "Home Alone"-ish redux of a '60s Disney film (albeit this time an animated one). In both cases, critics found the results "pretty slow, flat, and dumb," to quote Roger Ebert's "Flubber" review. But commercially? These Disney remakes were quite profitable. The more things change...