The Absent Minded Professor *** (1961, Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Ed Wynn, Edward Andrews) – Classic Movie Review 10,531

Director Robert Stevenson’s 1960 black and white comedy The Absent Minded Professor is good, old-style fun for kids and their parents, and stars Fred MacMurray as a daffy college professor called Professor Ned Brainard who invents a green gunge that defies gravity and flies. It’s called Flubber and it allows flubbergasted Fred to steer his vintage Ford car through the air and to round up foreign agents. Keenan Wynn plays the villain Alonzo P Hawk, who tries to steal the flying rubber.

There is still a fond regard for this daft but amusing and popular Disney fantasy film, based on short story A Situation of Gravity by Samuel W Taylor, with a warm, bumbling central performance and okay-enough special effects in their day that of course look none too impressive now. However it was nominated for Best Special Effects, as well as Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. MacMurray was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor – Comedy or Musical.

MacMurray twinkles and shows charm, the only two things his successor in the 1997 remake Flubber, Robin Williams, can’t do as a comedian. Though, of course, it goes without saying that the indispensable, much loved, much missed Robin Williams is a much funnier man than Fred, even if Flubber wasn’t exactly his finest hour.

It also features Nancy Olson, Tommy Kirk, Leon Ames, Ed Wynn, Edward Andrews, Wally Brown, Forrest Lewis, James Westerfield, David Lewis, Alan Carney, Jack Mullaney, Elliott Reid, Belle Montrose, Gage Clarke, Alan Hewitt, Raymond Bailey, Wendell Holmes, Don Ross, Charlie Briggs and Wally Boag.

Bill Walsh writes the screenplay.

Sequel: Son of Flubber (1963).

It is remade as a TV movie in 1988 and again as Flubber in 1997.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,531

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