A lonely scientist creates a strange green slime to solve the world’s energy problems. But instead of helping, the slime comes to life with a mind of its own, bouncing around, causing chaos, and changing everything he thought he knew.

‘SPOILER ALERT’

Philip, a Chemistry professor at Medfield College wakes up from the sound of his alarm clock. However, he has a problem. The college is on the brink of closing, and he is yet looking forward for a revolutionary breakthrough in energy that could save the situation. Struggling with debt and almost destroying his relationship, the smart professor is just about to discover something incredible. Something that defies the laws of physics, and possibly change his life forever.

He presses the wrong button, ejecting a tank of litter from his compound and leaving it to fall on the roadside. Weber, his household robot wakes him up, breaks an egg using laser technology, adds flour and oil on the frying pan and makes pancakes for him. Weebo, his female flying robot assistant moves close to Philip and shows him the news on the paper. Chester is threatening to close Medfield College where Philip teaches Chemistry because of poor performance and recurring debt.

He needs a new energy source to save the college and his loan is due at the end of the school year. He checks his schedule and Weebo shows the professor is having a wedding with Sara, the president of Medfield College at 6:00 pm at the Presbyterian Church on Beach Street.

The following morning, he rides to college, enters the class and finds students drawing. Without asking them, he immediately starts teaching Newton’s Law but no one is paying attention to the professor. He looks confused and once he’s way into the lesson, Philip discovers its not time for his lesson. On the other hand, Sara is negotiating over the shutdown of the college. As the president, she doesn’t understand why a college would be closed down because of debt.

She’s trying to find a way of repaying it, but there’s seems to be no solution at the moment. She approaches her friend, Betty, who helps her prepare for the upcoming wedding in the evening. The professor has missed the last two previous wedding sessions and is almost heartbreaking Sara. Every time Sara shows up in church, the professor never shows up. Not because he doesn’t like her, but because he’s trying to find a new source of energy and salvage the college.

The professor has been spending hours in his home laboratory mixing chemicals and attempting to solve many real-world problems. As Professor Philip leaves, he school, he meets Sara at the table. The professor is still absent-minded and looks confused, all because of his love for Sara. He even confuses Betty’s name by calling her Ruthie, until Betty corrects him. When Betty asks him about his plans for the day, he tells her he’s planning to give the students a test and go home.

However, that’s not what Betty means. When Betty tells the professor she asking how he’s prepared for the wedding, its when the professor realizes he has a wedding in the evening. Sara also tells Philip that this is the last time she’s attempting to marry him. If he doesn’t show up at the church, it’s over. The professor tells Sara how much he lover her but Sara doesn’t want to hear any of that. The only way the professor can proof his love is by showing up at the church.

Wilson, Philip’s former partner currently working with Rutland company owned by Chester, pays a visit to Philip. He finds Philip working on a lighter than air compound. Despite them working together for a long time, Philip decided to separate because he got tired of Wilson stealing his ideas. Arguably, Philip is the brightest of the two. The professor is a genius, an innovator and always working to develop new ideas.

Wilson admits he hates Professor Philip’s brilliance because he’s petty and corrupt. He further tells Philip that this time he hasn’t just come to steal his ideas and profit from them. He has come to steal his fiancée and make him his wife. Weebo reminds the professor of his wedding but he seems too busy.

In the evening, Sara heads to the church expecting Philip to show up but he doesn’t. Everyone in the church, including the father, gets tired if waiting. Some people start leaving the church one after another. Sara sheds tears for being disappointed, but Wilson is happy. He wants to take advantage and make her his own wife. Consequently, Sara is now heartbroken and decides to return home, escorted by Wilson. She can’t believe how a man she loves so much can fail to show up on their wedding day.

Weebo cancels the wedding from her robotic system when the professor goes to his laboratory. He continues with his experiment to find a new material lighter than air that has been ongoing for the last 2 years. Philip starts mixing chemicals again, connects the negative and positive terminals to a special metallic can and adds a touch of electricity. The result is catastrophic as his experiment fails again. Some of the laboratory equipment blow up, disappointing him.

Filled with furry, anger and disappointment he hits the can with his right foot and climbs upstairs. On his way up, he hears a wheezing sound from the metallic can and comes back. White smoke comes out of the can as he moves closer. Turning it off, he opens the can and a huge amount of steam fills his face. Peeping inside the pot, he sees a green substance producing some sound.

The substance seems to have a lifeform, but with no distinct structures. He picks it with his hand and realizes its cold after exposure to the external environment. Professor Philip describes it as an elastomer because of its elastic nature to assume any form and shape. While in his hands, the substance becomes highly viscous and turns into a cube. It can phase shift and moldable as well.

The professor starts tickling the life form and also notices it producing a laughing sound. It turns itself into a shape of a dog and barks at him, becomes gullible, ductile and turns into the original form. To understand it better, he stretches it and realizes it doesn’t have an elastic limit. However, he makes a bi mistake by telling Weebo to take a photograph of him holding it.

The flying rubber is afraid of flashes of light. In respond to the camera’s flash, it bounces, hitting the roof and breaking pieces of glass in the house. The rubber breaks up many things as because Philip has given it a bit more free will. Within no time, it breaks through the glass window and disappears into the darkness. Due to its flabby and bouncy nature, the flying rubber ends up into the neighboring houses.

It bounces into the kids’ bedrooms, through the living room and hits the remote control severally. To some extent, it gets into a bottle full of ink. Once it escapes, the flying rubber draws a figure of an old man on the wall while bouncing in the neighboring houses. For some households, it breaks into pieces, playing with the cats and dogs inside the house then comes back to its original form again.

Within a short period, the flying rubber dashes out, hits the cars on the road before returning to the professor’s house. Immediately, professor Philip comes up with an idea. He takes a round bowl and captures the rubber as it breaks the window, entering his house at high speed. Weebo tells Philip how interesting the flying rubber is, and Philip names it “Flubber.”

Philip conducts more experiments to control Flubber without leaving it to jump around the homestead. He also learns that Flubber is just an ordinary radioisotope and removes it from the lead containment unit. He then places it carefully behind the sliding shutter, which works just like a camera to regulate the flow of gamma radiation. This way, he manages to produce a stream flow of energy from the Flubber instead of billion random particles.

With Weebo’s help, they place the sliding shutter mechanism underneath the Flubber. The gamma radiation triggers a metastable decay in the Flubber itself. This releases enormous amounts of energy, and that’s what propels the Flubber. This makes it easy to control it than dropping, kicking it or bombarding it with light photon flashes. By controlling the gamma radiation flux, he excels at controlling the movement of Flubber.

Just before he’s done with his experiment, Philip gets an alarm notification in his wrist watch. It’s 6:30 p.m. in the evening, and he has to attend the wedding. Weebo tells him he can’t go to get married anymore because his wedding was supposed to be at 6:30 a.m. in the morning, not in the evening. Sara just waited for the professor but he was busy caught up in the laboratory working on Flubber that’s why he never showed up in the morning.

The following morning, Philip goes to the college and meets Sara in her office chair. Sara is very angry at him because he has already broken her heart. Although Philip tries to offer explanations to Sara, she doesn’t want to listen to any of his excuses. To win Sara’s sympathy, professor Philip takes out Flubber and tells Sara he can use it to save the entire college. However, Sara only cars about her emotions.

To proof to Sara that he has a new invention, he jumps out through the window and tells Sara Flubber will make him bounce back to the window unharmed. Unfortunately, this sems to be a bad day for Philip. Flubber slides outside his back pocket before he jumps, leaving him to hit the ground and almost breaking his spine.

Meanwhile, Bennett, Chester’s son arrives home when angry. He heads straight to his father’s office and tells him the professor has made him fail the exams. Chester’s whole idea is to sponsor the college and make all the teachers give Bennett A’s, even if he doesn’t deserve it. Unfortunately, the school has no say but to operate according to his wish.

But professor Philip is a just man, who gives Bennett Fs because of his laziness in class and poor performance in school. Besides, Bennett is on probation and has also flunked in Chemistry. Chester questions his men why they haven’t told professor Philip to give his son A’s so that he can join Havard School of Business. Chester is disappointed because Philip is a man of his standards.

Chester believes a man who has standards has something more important to offer and cannot hire him for free. Therefore, he comes up with a plan. Chester sends his two goons to go and steal Flubber from Philip, then use it as a bait to give Bennet false grades and clear the college loan. However, Wesson, one of Chester’s henchmen isn’t aware of Philip’s Flubber because it’s still in the prototype stage. Smith, Chester’s henchman and Wesson’s friend, make their first attempt at night.

As Smith and Wesson arrive at Philip’s house, they peep through a hole made on the door and discover he’s still working on Flubber. Coincidentally, Philip is performing two major tests tonight. Philip adds 500 milligrams of crystalized Flubber to common hand cream and stirs the solution. However, he needs one spherical test subject to determine the effectiveness of his experiment.

He uses a golf ball and applies Flubber solution externally and evenly hovers it over the entire surface. He does this to perform the first kinetic test and the results are astounding. The golf ball bounces all over the house, breaking glass bottles and hitting the walls. It also hits Wesson on the forehead as it escapes outside the building, leaving him with a bruised, swollen forehead.

Second, he applies coating of Flubber to a surface of bowling ball to perform another kinetic test by controlling horizontal momentum. This test becomes more fatal right from the time he commences. The bowling ball also bounces on every surface it hits, almost injuring the professor’s head. Luckily, he has a small helmet on his head. In one of the attempts after hitting the wall, it comes straight for his forehead, but he moves down.

The ball hits one of the gas cylinders, leaving his house full of gas as it leaks. Due to inadequate space in his house, the ball escapes to the outside though a small opening. Unfortunately, Smith is peeping through the window as he observes the ball’s movements. The bowling ball hits him on the forehead, leaving him injured as he falls to the ground. Their plan fails, and now they have to be answerable to Chester. Left with no choice, they return to Chester.

Wesson and Chester haven’t noticed that the balls have bounced and moved far away to the sky. Before the leave, the tennis and bowling balls return the surface, pulled by gravity as they hit them again. Nevertheless, Philip discovers that the Flubber can be applied in the field of sports, especially any sport that requires jumping.

Furthermore, he makes more fluid Flubber and puts it inside a spray, but realizes the spray is clogged. To test it, he sprays part of it outside the window, right where Chesson and Smith just got hit by the balls. All this time, Chesson and Smith are standing under the roof on his pavement, afraid of the returning balls to bounce before they can get back to the car and leave Philips premises.

The two gentlemen have not received what they expected. Instead of stealing Flubber, its applications through experimentation ends up hurting them. Despite all this, Philip is unaware of the two thieves who have come to steal his most valuable scientific discovery. As the professor sprays the Flubber outside, Wesson and Smith happen to be standing next to the window. Since they’re just focusing their eyes in the sky waiting for the balls to return, none of them notices fluid Flubber on the ground.

After waiting for a few moments without seeing balls returning, they decide to move to the car without looking at what they’re stepping on. Just like the balls, fluid Flubber makes them bounce off the ground, flying to the sky and falling down on a tree.

Philip connects his car’s accelerator to the sliding shutter, hoping to convert his normal car to a flying ship using Flubber. By pressing down the accelerator, it releases gamma rays, and this increases the thrust to lift the baby chirp. He uses the steering wheel and alters it to control the lateral motion of the car. If he turns right, the car steers right. Turns the wheel to the left, and it steers left. So, it functions a lot like a normal automatic shift with drive, park, neutral and reverse options.

It’s time to test out his car to see whether it can fly, because he’s just about to make a major breakthrough. Then it works! But there’s one more challenge. He needs to learn how to drive the flying car, even though the professor is so happy that he will never buy wheels again. Infact, he almost hits a traffic light post and lands on a tree once before he gets it right. At some point, he flies as high as the clouds, hooting to birds in the air and almost causing another accident when the car starts rolling in air.

Perhaps he should come up with a specific car flying manual, but that doesn’t bother him. All that’s running on his mind is Sara. Professor Philip uses his car and drives to Sara’s house to see if she will change her mind. As he arrives at Sara’s house, he packs it in air, just above her house’s roof. It really pains him to see Sara spending time with Wilson that evening before he goes back to his house.

Philip doesn’t feel good about it because he truly loves her from his heart. Wilson is just forcing himself to love Sara because he’s jealous of professor Philip. He can’t withstand to see Wilson hugging Sara and throws an apple towards Wilson, hitting him on the head as he leaves Sara’s house.

Wesson and Smith explain to Chester what has happened to them and assure him he will have a heck of a time before he gets the Flubber. Weebo feels like there’s a way she could make professor happy, but all she has is just a robotic smile. She feels Philip’s deep love for Sara, but Philip doesn’t allow himself to get relationship advice from computers. He knows there are human issues to solve, especially ones involving emotions.

Weebo scans and makes a three-dimensional model of Sara on the computer, fits the best outfits and displays it inside the room at night as the professor is resting. Although old-school, she manages to control it, making it look like a real human. As the model walks into professor’s bedroom, it virtually touches his arm, immediately waking up the professor.

Weebo realizes she has made a mistake, making a model without Philip’s permission. To cover up for her mistakes, she turns off the lights, erases the information on the computer and pretends to be sleeping. Philip wakes up in a hurry, heading downstairs to tell Weebo of a special dream he just had. Flubber is just going to solve all their problems! The Rutland team is just a bout to have their basketball games in the next few days, so he decides to try it out.

He waits until its at night, then heads to the basketball pitch. Using the liquid Flubber Philip sprays it on the basketball, but the ball keeps bouncing without scoring well as he has expected. Next, he initiates plan B.

The professor sprays Flubber at the bottom of his shoes and controls elements within Flubber using a bungee cord. He uses a three-to-one elasticity ratio of fifty-pound ballast. Surprisingly, he flies in the air within the radius of the ballast, reaching the scoring section. His experiment also succeeds, knowing that he has found the solution to save the college.

A few days later, teams compete on Rutland pitch, and Philip is so optimistic his team is going to win. Infact, he has been preparing for it. The opponents have never lost in the last 108 games, but all he knows is that his Flubber will do something cray in the field. The night before the competition, he prepares lots of liquid Flubber. He pits some on his natural jelly and another portion in the spray.

Just before the competition begins, Philip sneaks behind the team as it receives last minute motivation from the coach. Since Flubber works after 30 minutes of application on the soles of shoes, he applies it after the first half of the game to avoid any suspicion. Indeed, his team is defeated in the first half, but he’s not worried at all.

During the second half, Philip applies liquid Flubber on his hands and intentionally greets the players as they enter the pitch. This creates a stronger combination of the Flubber on the shoes and another version on their hands. The scores start shifting immensely as the players using Flubber jump extraordinarily high. Some players dribble the ball extremely fast, such that no one could believe it, including the players themselves.

As one of the spectators approaches the coach and accuses the opponents from cheating in the basketball game, he’s silenced as the coach tells him to sit down. By the time the game comes to an end, both teams are already tying. The referee requests for an extra 12 seconds to determine the winner after a brief period of resting.

Philip approaches Dale, one of the teenage basketball players from his department and tells him to jump as high as he can. To find a chance and talk to Dale, he tells the coach that Dale doesn’t have any problem with motivation to excel in the game, but has a problem with the sole of his shoes. Philip has just realized that Dale is trying to wipe off the sole of is shoes, and this would otherwise make his team lose the match.

Both teams resume immediately after the break and compete for the final 12 seconds. Philip shouts to Dale, telling him to jump. As Dale jumps, he catches the ball just in time, flies in air and scores the final goal. His team emerges as the winner, but Chester realizes professor Philip has something to do with the team’s victory.

Wilson and Sara have also attended the basketball competition. As they leave, Wilson requests to talk to Sara privately, but Wilson tries to stop him. However, Sara accepts to listen to the professor. Until now, Sara has not yet healed from the heartbreak since Wilson failed to show up in the church on their wedding day. Even though she listens to him, she speaks with no interest of getting back into a relationship with professor Philip.

Thinking that using Flubber may win her heart back, he realizes that he has lost her again. As Chester travels to his house that evening with his son Bennett, he sees Philip’s car flying in air. But Chester isn’t happy about it. All he wants is taking away Philip’s invention and leaving him to struggle, out jealousy.

Weebo notices the professor’s sad mood and tries to sooth him. Professor Philip tells Weebo he’s not absent-minded because he’s selfish, crazy, or inconsiderate. He’s absent-minded because he’s in love with Sara, but he doesn’t get any chances with her. He decides to let her move on, because maybe he’s not right for her.

Professor wishes he can understand human beings, specifically women, their emotions and passions. If he can, he couldn’t have spent his entire life in a laboratory trying to figure out how the world works. Weebo believes there’s still another chance, but professor know that it’s over.

Determined to help the professor, Weebo has been secretly recording Philip’s words as he claims to love Sara. As everyone goes to sleep, Weebo sneaks out at night and heads to Sara’s house. She can’t ring the door bell because she doesn’t want anyone else to know she’s around. So, she calls Sara by the window. Sara thinks there’s an emergency, but Weebo replays back the video to let Sara know that professor Philip truly loves her.

That same night, Sara goes to Philip’s house, marking their reunion. Philip can’t believe Sara is back, unaware of Weebo’s efforts to unite them. Seizing the opportunity, Philip takes this chance to explain to Sara how Flubber can save the school. He also takes her for a night ride in his flying car, and Sara is convinced.

She’s also optimistic of Philip’s latest discoveries, and finds the reason for giving him another chance. All this time, Philip has been working on inventions but Sara has always thought that Philip never has time for her. Now that she understands it, she collaborates with the professor to save the school by making more money to clear the school debt. As Philip thinks of making more shoes to help teams win at sports, Sara comes up with an idea of air travel.

They can use Flubber to make many air travel cars and sell them to a well-paying car manufacturing company. Meanwhile, Philip has left Weebo in charge of the house as he enjoys his night ride in a flying car with Sara. He has no idea Chester wants his Flubber and make himself rich. As they first land outside their home, Chester approaches Philip asking him for an offer. He wants to get Flubber, use it to make himself lots of money and forgive them for their college debt.

Philip declines Chester’s offer, but Chester threatens to close down the school the following term if they fail to comply to his demands. Still, the professor stands firm on his decision, claiming that all his discoveries will always remain the property of Medfield College. Chester steps back, but one of is henchmen warns the professor for having made a bad move. Chester wants to use his affluence to oppress the needy, but the professor is prioritizing his students’ needs.

Still on the same day, Chester decides to take Flubber forcefully. He sends Wesson and Smith to steal Flubber from Philip’s house. Philip has gone to a famous car manufacturing company accompanied by Sara to sell the car then get a cheque to clear the loan. Meanwhile, Wesson and Smith break into the house after knocking down the door. They manage to steal Flubber and get away with it.

During their robbery attempt, Wesson hits Weebo, destroying her. Philip and Sara manage to secure the cheque. At least they can now save the entire college from the oppressive tyranny of Chester’s demands. As they get back to the house, the professor doesn’t believe seeing his house broken into. He moves around the house searching for Weebo, only to discover that’s she’s utterly destroyed and leaking battery fluid.

Weebo is beyond repair and there’s nothing the professor can do about it. But just before Weebo shuts down, she displays the word “STORK” on the screen, then loses the serial communication. Professor Philip has made all the efforts to save the school, yet ends up losing all his inventions and discoveries. As he sobs, Sara tells him to remember the last word Weebo has displayed before shutting down permanently.

Sara knows this can’t just be a random file. There must be something special about that word. As both move to the computer, they discover it’s a secret Weebo has been storing all her backup information but has never told the professor about it. They open the file and find all the designs, with improvements of Weebo. This gives professor Philip another chance to redesign a more advanced version of Weebo, restoring all her memories.

Sara and Philip drive to Chester’s house. Philip requests a 30-day loan extension on the college debt to help Chester discover everything he has ever known about Flubber. Even though he’s willing to help, Chester comes up with queer demands. In exchange, he wants to own everything that Philip will ever discover for the next two years over a 30-day loan extension period! Sara says it’s unfair, but Philip agrees because he has a plan.

Chester takes them to the library to give his own professor a little help. It turns out that Wilson is Chester’s professor. Sara and Philip are astonished because they can’t expect their own friend to betray them. Nevertheless, Philip opens the container with Flubber. Using his hidden remote, he controls his flying car and switches on the flashlights. Since Flubber is susceptible to flashlights, it becomes unstable and bounces everywhere in the house.

This causes a lot of drama as Philip team up with Sara to fight against Chester, Bennet, the henchmen and Wilson. Sara and Philip keep hoping from one corner of the roof to another using the liquid Flubber on the soles of their shoes. As Chester tries to escape, Flubber hits him on the head as it bounces, pushing him through the glass wall and falling inside the cold swimming pool.

Sara jumps and holds the Flubber, then releases it straight to Wilson’s mouth. It causes a lot of discomfort in Wilson’s stomach until it exits his body. Flubber moves out through the window after defeating Chester’s team. A few days later, Philip saves the entire college, builds a better version of Weebo and weds Sara. Both head to Hawaii to enjoy their vacation, making him a hero.

Sometimes, being a genius doesn’t mean having all pieces of the puzzle. Philip might have made one of the most influential inventions the world had ever experienced, but it was his journey to understanding love, commitment and purpose that truly defined him. But do you think someone can really balance genius with genuine connection?

Flubber 1997.