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Waste of time

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Excellent but underrated film

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The Absent-Minded Professor was the 1961 Disney classic about a nerdy college professor, delightfully played by Fred MacMurray, who invents an anti-gravity substance that comes to be known as "flubber", which he uses to make his automobile airborne and help his college's basketball team finally w in a few games, while keeping a corrupt local businessman (Keenan Wynn) from stealing the substance for itself.After playing an adulterous slimeball the previous year in The Apartment, MacMurray proved that he could play a nice guy too and pretty much carved out an entire new career for himself, which included the TV series MY THREE SONS and a few more Disney comedies. Nancy Olson is lovely as the professor's neglected girlfriend and great veterans like Elliott Reed, Edward Andrews, and Leon Ames register in key supporting roles.Bill Walsh's screenplay is well-mounted by Robert Stevenson, whose next directorial assignment would be a little thing called Mary Poppins. The film was followed by a sequel called Son of Flubber and was remade in 1997 as Flubber with Robin Williams. 7.5/10

In "Double Indemnity" and "The Apartment" Fred MacMurray proved adept at drama. In this Disney, family comedy he shows his strenght as a comedic actor. MacMurray plays Ned Brainerd, a collegiate professor who devises an invention, "Flubber" (flying rubber) which is super-bouncy and allows his car to defy gravity. A rich alumni, Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn) wishes to get his hands on the invention and the millions of dollars it is guaranteed to garner, so he uses under-handed methods to try to wrest control of Ned's spectacular discovery. Their is good humor throughout this movie, particularly when Hawk's desires become known to Ned and Ned uses "Flubber" to make Hawk bounce out-of-control. This film is one of the Disney Company's first comedies and one can only wish that their later one's are half-as-funny as this early venture. This movie gets a grade of A- and a very strong recommendation.

Some parts of this are very funny, some parts are silly stupid and all parts are very dated and make little sense. Maybe that's why someone figured a re-make was appropriate. That, and the fact that it's still a very entertaining movie, almost a classic. The re-make was done in 1997 with the movie, "Flubber."Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Kirk.....wow, there are some familiar names from the '50s and '60s Olson had lost her youthful looks from "Sunset Boulevard," but that had been a decade earlier. MacMurray didn't look a whole lot different from his 1944 film noir classic of "Double Indemnity," proving once again how much better men age than women.Kids of today would still laugh at this film, although they have dead spots in here which are not prevalent in modern-day films.

The Absent-Minded Professor was a typical Disney classic that I watched when I was younger. In short, this film is about a professor who creates an anti-gravity substance known as 'flubber'. This substance makes his car fly, sort of reminiscent of the car in 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'. Of course, someone is trying to kidnap this idea, and it's up to some children to save the day.I am not sure what children today would think of this film, but I did find it enjoyable, and I would have seen it in the mid-1980s. I would like to think that children today would find it just as enjoyable and entertaining.