Yahoo Movies Robin Williams Was Addicted To 'Tooth-Rotting Sentimentality' Says Barry Norman In 'Honest Tribute'
Veteran movie critic Barry Norman has turned in a brutally honest appraisal of the work of Robin Williams, accusing him of making films laden with ‘saccharine, tooth-rotting sentimentality’.
Norman also mused whether drugs and drinking caused him to make the ‘bad films’ which featured on his CV.
In the column for the Radio Times, described as ‘an honest tribute’, Norman cut through the hero worship of the late actor, who took his own life last week, and took aim at a talent ‘sometimes… spread so thinly as to be almost invisible’.
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“It’s hard to know what to make of Robin Williams,” Norman writes.
“Admiration is called for, but also sadness, not just for his tragic death but for an enormous talent which, if not exactly unfulfilled, could sometimes be spread so thinly as to be almost invisible.”
Norman, who helmed the BBC’s ‘Film’ series from 1972 until ‘Film 98’, praised Williams celebrated work, and Oscar-winning success, but continued to lament his less successful movies.
“That’s a CV for which many a star would give his eyeteeth. But among the good films was a plenitude of bad ones,” he continued.
“Well, every actor makes bad films occasionally but what was remarkable about Williams was not that he was so good in the good ones but that he was so very bad in the bad ones.
“He made no secret of his addiction to drugs and alcohol but there was another addiction, which he never admitted but which became increasingly evident in his own work – to saccharine, tooth-rotting sentimentality.
“Were the bad films made when drink or drugs played their part?”
Referring to Williams struggle with addiction, he said: “You might also ask what caused a man of such gifts to rely so heavily on drink and drugs.
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“I once asked a noted Hollywood shrink why so many stars were addicted and she said it was probably because deep down they didn’t believe they deserved their fame and fortune and used stimulants and the like to ease their worry.”
As well as hammering his part in ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ for its ‘tearful sentimentality’, he also slated ‘What Dreams May Come’, the high-concept fantasy from 1998 in which he played a dead man in heaven seeking to save his wife from damnation in hell after she commits suicide.
“It was unrelentingly weepy and he was so cringe-inducing that if it were the only Williams film you ever saw, you would say, with confidence, that he would never make an actor,” Norman says.
“If we forgive the bad films he is a great loss because, given the right vehicles, he still had so much to offer.”
Norman’s movie column courted controversy in 2012 too, when he was criticised for misogyny after referring to Julia Roberts’ role in ‘Pretty Woman’ as ‘every man’s dream hooker’.
Defending himself at the time, he said: “God Almighty, what is the matter with these people? I was merely describing in shorthand how these films depict women, not advancing my own views. If people don’t have the intelligence to see that, it is not my fault.”
Photo credits: Rex Features/Universal
