The more pathetic the role, the more evident Robin Williams’s conscientiousness—but his professionalism doesn’t make this fantasy worthwhile. He plays a college professor whose preoccupation with creating a new supersubstance repeatedly causes him to miss his own wedding. A rival scientist, who’s also after the professor’s fiancee, and a buttoned-down thief and his bungling henchmen want to steal the invention, a green goo with a boundless energy it lends to everything it touches (a scene set at a basketball game would seem inevitable even if this movie weren’t a remake). Other special effects—a flying car and the professor’s hovering computer sidekick, which has a crush on him—are supposed to make the story romantic in one way or another. The computer’s emotions are suggested by TV and movie clips that pop up on its screen; clips are also used to provide commentary on the plot, freeing John Hughes and Bill Walsh, whose screenplay is based on The Absent Minded Professor (1961), from having to come up with any ideas. Directed by Les Mayfield.