The Absent Minded Professor (1961)
Ned Brainard (Fred MacMurray) is an eccentric Medfield College
professor who is so engrossed in conducting experiments in his
garage/lab, he misses his own wedding - three times.
Tiring of this, Ned's lovely fiancée Betsy starts seeing nerdy
Professor Ashton, and to make matters worse, local tycoon Alonzo
Hawk threatens to turn beloved Medfield into an estate.
After a botched experiment blows up Brainard's garage, he
discovers he has accidentally invented a flying rubber, which he
dubs "flubber".
The gravity-defying substance sets up
the film's best comedic segments: Brainard applies it to the
Medfield basketball team's gym shoes at halftime, sticks it on his
own shoes at a school dance, and even converts his old Model T
into a flying machine.
Naturally, the greedy Hawk wants the goo for himself, forcing
Brainard to attempt to fly to Washington DC, to plead his case.
MacMurray is a lot of fun in the title role, ably supported by
a cast including Tommy Kirk, Keenan Wynn and Leon Ames, although
the central romance between MacMurray and huffy bride-to-be Nancy
Olson gets a bit annoying in its repetitiveness.
In all, however, this is one of the best children's films of
the 60's, and one of Disney's more successful forays into live
action films.
A sequel, Son of Flubber, followed in 1963, with a
remake simply titled Flubber appearing in 1997 (starring
Robin Williams).
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