Robin Williams, who died last night from an apparent suicide, was a strange, furry ball of energy with a scrunchy, Santa Claus face, and if you were born between 1980 and 1990, he was, for some reason, critical to your budding understanding of the world. Millennials like me were too young to have even really known about the arch, bawdy Robin Williams from his coke-addled standup days, or the one from Mork and Mindy or even Good Morning, Vietnam. Instead, he was the near-constant clownish uncle on our big screens as we approached adolescence in the mid 90s.
His presence on a poster was the signal from Hollywood that we were supposed to take an interest in a movie. After Hook in 1991, we obediently lined up a couple of times each year to see what the movies had cooked up for us to laugh at, and then usually get kind of sad at, before finally laughing at some more.
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The hit streak that followed Hook included Aladdin in 1992, Mrs Doubtfire in 1993, Jumanji in 1995, and both Flubber and his Oscar-winning role in Good Will Hunting in 1997. Patch Adams arrived in 1998 and Bicentennial Man in 1999, all of which you and your family went to unless you’re some kind of freak. During that time, you also might have opted in for some of the weird, unfortunate or more emotionally harrowing ones: Toys in 1992, Jack in 1996, Father’s Day in 1997, What Dreams May Come in 1998.
But Williams had a long career, bouncing from character to character on standup specials, popping up in an ever grimmer streak of thrillers and dark comedies during the last decade. Throughout, he was a fascinating interview subject for TV hosts and podcasters, for whom he’d willingly plumb the darker recesses of his psyche – and, indeed, make light of them.
It’s difficult to know how to respond when a man with such a large and three-dimensional personality exits the world. So here are a bunch of my favourite clips of Williams’, from the movies I’ll always remember him by.
1. “What year is it?!” from Jumanji.
Jumanji was yet another movie where overgrown kid Robin Williams was thrust into the world, and forced to suddenly cope with being an adult. The fact Williams could star in both One Hour Photo and Happy Feet Two worked purely because he was only a grown-up on the outside. See also: Hook, Jack, Toys, and, in a way, Bicentennial Man.
2. The food fight from Hook.
In Hook, Williams is kind of a crap adult. He isn’t a dog killer or a warlord or anything, but he is a corporate lawyer, and that’s definitely a bad thing for someone who used to be Peter Pan to be. He plays a man who’s forgotten his childhood, basically, and is forced to rediscover it in order to save his own kids. Watching this food fight scene, you imagine that reverting to a childhood state wasn’t exactly too much of a bind for Williams.
3. One of the many monologues from Good Will Hunting.
He won an Oscar for this movie, and for good reason: Instead of being in yet another state of arrested development, he was suddenly tasked with beating the realities of adulthood into Matt Damon’s stubborn, permanently adolescent protagonist.
4. “Friend Like Me” from Aladdin.
If you’re around my age, you can sing this song note-for-note. You can probably redraw this sequence frame by frame. I credit Robin Williams, and this big, bombastic swing number for the trend that led to the music from The Mask two years later, and the popularity of the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies three years after that.
5. The “Carpe Diem” bit from Dead Poets Society.
I learned to be a contrarian by hating this movie from the first time I watched it in ninth grade. At the time, I thought it was a cynical machine, designed to deliver a fraudulent sense of nostalgia for a “pure” childhood love of poetry that no viewer actually ever experienced.
Now look at me tearing up watching this scene. Well, what am I supposed to feel, you fucking monsters?
“We are food for worms, lads,” indeed.
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