Purely Joyful Movie!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is actually a very fun movie. And also somewhat funny. It is more of an entertaining story than an outright comedy. I saw this on AMC and the guy presenting it said The Absent Minded Professor is Disney's second live action film. He also pointed out that a remake of this was made starring the late Robin Williams. Anyway, the special effects are dated (if you can actually call them special effects) but the scenes with the Professor's car lifting into the air and flying off are somewhat magically; especially in black and white. This film is fun for all ages and I highly recommend it. The movie is about a scientist who keeps forgetting his wedding because he is so focused on his experiments. He ends up inventing a substance with exponential potential energy and uses it to make a flying car, help basketball players win a game and help him win back the heart of his soon to be bride. Like I said, it is fun and you'll enjoy it. I'm not sure why it is only ranking around a 6.8 on IMDb but whatever.

I remember seeing this movie all the time when I was a little kid. we have it on DVD and my sister and I would watch it constantly. Even though I haven't seen it in years I can still remember plenty of scenes. Professor Ned Brainerd (Fred MacMurray) is a professor at Medfield College, who is known for (among other things) constantly missing his wedding to the school president's secretary Betsy Carlisle (Nancy Olson). The day Betsy finally gives up on Ned is also the day that Ned discovers flying rubber and tries to interest the school, the government, and Betsy into the idea of using it. Unfortunately the only person interested is greedy businessman Alonzo Hawk (Keenan Wynn). And when Hawk steals the flying rubber it's up to Ned to get it back. It's a very entertaining film, and the Hawk character would go on to appear in 2 other Disney films, Herbie Rides Again and Son of Flubber. The acting for the most part is good and MacMurray is really fun to watch here.

One aspect of this film that lived with me forever is the Model T. At the age 7 I zeroed in on this car and that it could fly caught my mind in that odd way that Age 7 stuff does. I have on my bookshelf a recovered edition, Ebay, of the Disney golden book edition with some marvelous pen-ink drawings, one of them a closeup of the car. So much was I into this that in Christmas of 1962, my parents bought a 1/2 scale Model T (gasoline engine, you can see them on Ebay if you look for mini model T) as the present of my life. I flipped totally. And I still have the car, sitting in the barn in the back yard.So films like this bring back fond memories indeed. It is not perfect and slow at times and just too "disney" for it's age, but it warms the soul.

I saw "Flubber", starring Robin Williams, more than once in the late 90's, I guess when it was new to the video format, but never knew it was a remake until I saw it again last year, probably for the first time since late last decade, and wasn't all that impressed (not sure exactly what I thought of it before). Over a year later, I've finally seen the original, "The AbsentMinded Professor", a live action Disney flick released in 1961, starring Fred MacMurray. I wasn't absolutely blown away by it, nor was I expecting to be, but I was expecting it to be better than its 1997 remake, with more laughs, and I think my moderate expectations were basically met.Ned Brainard is an absent-minded physical chemistry professor at Medfield College. On the day of the third wedding attempt (the professor failed to show up the first two times), Betsy Carlisle, his fiancée, waits for him, hoping he will show up this time. Unfortunately, he gets carried away with his experiments, trying to uncover the mysteries of the universe, and despite how hard his housekeeper tries to remind him about his wedding, she does not succeed. However, he does discover a powerful new substance, which he calls "Flubber"! Every time this substance hits a hard surface, it gains energy! He attempts to bring attention to this new discovery of his, but his efforts prove unsuccessful, as people are generally skeptical. It only seems to catch the attention of Alonzo P. Hawk, a scheming businessman who threatens the future of the college, and plans to use Flubber for his personal gain! For me, "The AbsentMinded Professor" was far from consistently hilarious, but there were definitely times when I laughed, even if the laughs were usually light. When I wasn't laughing, I think I was often smiling. A couple explosions early in the film, plus the main character playing tricks with his flying Model-T, getting his foe in trouble with the police one night, and some of the other things done with the Flubber, to be good comical moments, some more than others. MacMurray plays a likable lead, and the story is also interesting enough. Such scenes as the flying car ones are memorable, which brings me to the special effects. For the time, special effects like this were obviously an accomplishment. Sure, the effects in the 1997 remake are obviously superior, since it came 36 years later, but this 1961 film still deserves praise for the effects, and as for the remake, well, the special effects aren't enough to make up for the flaws in that film.This live action film from Walt Disney Pictures may be a bit dated now. I guess it hasn't aged as well as many other movies from around the same time or before, and probably can't please as many people today as it could upon its original release in the early 60's, during its box office success. However, it's probably still entertaining for many different age groups today, though maybe just to a lesser degree than before. "Flubber" obviously has more modern aspects than "The AbsentMinded Professor", but had potential to be so much better than it turned out to be, especially with Robin Williams in the lead role, and its predecessor remains superior. Even after all this time, this is a reasonable family film, clean and lighthearted.