Once, Robin Williams was considered the comedic genius of his generation. Through the '70s he rose to fame as the sitcom alien Mork, and in the '80s he thrilled audiences with spastic, mostly improvisational stand-up routines, culminating in his legendary 1987 performance at New York's Metropolitan Opera house.But it's no secret that the man we see now, the man who this summer brings us License to Wed, is a shell of the comedian we once knew.
At some critical point Robin Williams crossed over to the dark side. We suspect it happened sometime in the mid '90s, when acclaim for his performance in Aladdin perhaps sent the wrong message and positively reinforced comedic stylings just shy of schizophrenia.
That's when America's lovably manic jester began to resemble a sad, needy clown, and his trademark schtick—rapid cycling between impersonations of Russian doctors, gay cowboys, and Jewish mamelahs in under 20 seconds—gave way to incoherent, seizure-like free-association bits, as he gradually degenerated into what he is today: the Chernobyl of comedy, discomfiting audiences and leaving a noxious cloud of groans in his wake.
But how exactly did it happen? How did Williams, not unlike cult leader David Koresh, lure audiences in with his late '80s charisma only to hold them hostage for the next 20 years with nonsensical accents, wild hand gestures, and mawkish sentimentality?
Early Symptoms
Mar 8, 1996:
Williams appears in Mike Nichols's hit The Birdcage as the butch half of a gay couple living in South Beach. At the time the New York Times hails it as one of his "most cohesive and least antic performances." Unfortunately, he's never able to rein the camp back in. Williams takes the gay persona he perfected here, beats it to death, then drags its bloody corpse through the next decade.
Aug 9, 1996:
Williams is a logical choice to play the lead in Francis Ford Coppola's sad and strange Jack, the story of a 10-year-old boy with a medical condition that makes him look like a 40-year-old man. Critics largely give him a pass. Having adopted the role of an overgrown, overbearing pre-adolescent, Williams never quite leaves it behind. A man-child is born.
Nov 26, 1997:
As an "absent minded professor" Williams invents a flying rubber, ahem, Flubber, substance that seems to be a perfect marketing device for Nickelodeon. It's also the perfect excuse for Williams to court publicity while further advertising his "never-grow-up" complex, now rivaling that of Michael Jackson.
Dec 5, 1997:
A progressively puffier Williams appears in Good Will Hunting as the shrink who breaks through to math genius Matt Damon by relaying stories about how his wife used to fart in her sleep. Though his performance skirts the boundaries of acceptable touchy-feely-ness, the Academy rewards him for dialing it down by giving him an Oscar. He does not take the implicit critique and goes on just to dial it up.
Signs of Emotional Instability
Oct 2, 1998 and Dec 25, 1998:
What Dreams May Come and Patch Adams (aka the films where shit starts to go seriously wrong). With this twofer, Williams fully reveals all that is deeply wrong with both his comedic and dramatic personas. In the visually intense and innovative Dreams he plays an ultra-loving husband with a "Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly, moist eyes dripping with empathy" and willing to traverse heaven and hell to rescue his wife from eternal damnation. He can no longer do the same for disillusioned movie-goers. In Adams, he stars as a do-gooder doc with a thing for red clown noses. Roger Ebert put it best when he wrote, "If this guy broke into my hospital room and started tap-dancing with bedpans on his feet, I'd call the cops."
Sept 24, 1999:
If there is one place the man from Flubber should not have gone, it was into the world of Holocaust filmmaking. But he did with Jakob the Liar. So soon after Roberto Benigni's similar and superior Life is Beautiful, Jakob is a poorly executed sign of hubris and the exception to the rule that all Holocaust films will get you at least an Oscar nod. It also marks a turning point in critical and audience reactions to Williams, who now officially does not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Dec 17, 1999:
Williams plays a robot with feelings (the only kind the movies make) who longs to become human and befriends a curly-headed little girl who, ironically, starred in a vastly more entertaining Pepsi commercial. Bicentennial Man is so sappy and cloying, the film inspires the BBC to say of Williams, "some believe he's a comic genius. Others think he is saccharine and irritating with a truly appalling beard. But whatever you think of Robin Williams, after watching Bicentennial Man you'll be thinking long and hard before going to see one of his movies again."
Displays of Aggression
Mar 29, 2002:
In the huge flop Death to Smoochy, which earned only $8.4 million dollars, Williams takes his first turn in a bad guy role, as a fired kids' entertainer who wants to kill the next big thing in children's television, a big purple rhino. "The trouble is," in the words of Entertainment Weekly, "Williams makes everything he says sound like an impersonation; even his meant-to-be-shocking tirades come with built-in quotation marks."
May 24, 2002:
Williams plays killer mouse to Al Pacino's detective cat in Chris Nolan's Insomnia, a psychological thriller set in always sunny summer Alaska. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution praises Williams, claiming, "You can barely place that eerily familiar face, and his Mork-ish physical energy has been rechanneled into something jittery and unsettling." By starring in the equally creepy One Hour Photo, also that year, Williams shows a glimmer of self-awareness in his role choices. At this point, it's definitely much easier to accept him as a psychotic murderer than a comic with a heart of gold.
Total Implosion
April 28, 2006:
RV, his highest profile film in a long while, tanked with critics. It's not surprising. No one wants to be sequestered with Williams in a theater, let alone a camper. The Boston Globe says as the main character he "grovels, whines, sputters, shrieks, sweats, and purses his lips in that familiar expression of Williams Agonistes. His blue eyes water with the pain of castration administered on a daily basis. Is Bob mourning his trapped life or Williams his stalled career?" Why can't it be both?
Aug 9, 2006:
After 20 years of sobriety, Williams heads to rehab for alcoholism.
Oct 13, 2006:
Man of the Year attempts to capitalize on the Jon Stewart phenomenon too late, with Williams starring as Tom Dobbs, a straight-shooting talk-show host who runs for president. The candidate's act is, in the words of A.O. Scott, "the familiar rapid-fire Robin Williams free association, more silly than stinging and more likely to titillate with sexual naughtiness than to provoke with topical insight." A nation is appalled.
July 3, 2007:
Pushing the limits of credibility, a young couple willingly undergoes a marriage boot-camp overseen by Reverend Frank, aka Robin Williams, in License to Wed. The New York Post writes, "I hereby pronounce you a flop." The Minneapolis Star Tribune argues, "To say the picture isn't funny is putting it mildly. It isn't tolerable." The Daily Herald snips, "Williams deserves to have comic 'License' revoked." The L.A. Times puts the nail in the coffin, declaring: "Robin Williams's career appears to have come full circle. As a breakout comedy star 30 years ago, he and his uniquely mercurial talent were a tough fit for filmmakers looking for appropriate projects. Now, in his mid-50s, the actor is once again being miscast on a regular basis."
I couldn't agree more.
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