Flubber

The new Flubber started out as fun. The film's promoters sent out containers of green gunk and a press kit with a spring-loaded Flubber on the front. Hours of enjoyment can be had by just flicking the little critter around. The film itself -- Disney's remake of its 1961 hit The Absent-Minded Professor -- is considerably less entertaining.

Robin Williams plays an inventor so scatterbrained he forgets to show up for his own wedding, but so inspired he invents Flubber, a form of pure, mischievous energy that can endow anything it touches with the gift of flight. As soon as Williams sets his goo loose on the world, mirthful chaos is inevitable.

Flubber, though, seems to have been coated with a substance of entirely opposite qualities. Every joke rises like a bag of wet sand; every flight of fancy seems weighted with a ballast of crap. The only real laugh comes when Williams kneels sobbing over the battered casing of his computerized companion, Weebo. Otherwise, this "comedy" is a sad, sad affair. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle and in the suburbs.

-- Chris Wright