Beautiful bastard

McDonald had a smallish part in "A Smile Like Yours" (1997), a comedy about the perils of conception and infertility. This concept must have appealed so little to audiences that by the time the film was out on video, the cover featured a baby wearing Day-Glo sunglasses (a marketing gambit that must amount to pure box-office gold) even though there is no baby in the film whatsoever. People must have been very disappointed to find no wisecracking, jaded Borscht-belt babies in this film.

McDonald plays a rich guy named Richard, in his trademarked Corporate Scum mode -- he's subtly creepy in that conspiratorial, white man in a suit gonna fuck you in the fanny if you don't watch out way. But he doesn't have enough to do, and the film is a sinkhole.

In "Flubber" (1997) McDonald plays Wilson Croft, evil nemesis to Robin Williams' Looney Tunes, absent-minded Professor Brainerd. Croft has stolen all of Brainerd's inventions, over the course of their acquaintance, and now he intends to steal his girl. "I admit that I hate you for your brilliance. I'm petty and corrupt," smiles Croft.

In the process of blowing up his house and missing his own wedding, Brainerd invents an adorable, formless creature that could be the bastard offspring of the Pillsbury Doughboy and a bag of radioactive snot, and names it Flubber.

"Flubber?" McDonald asks with oozing derision, blinking hard, as if to say, You tragically retarded half-man.

McDonald is at leave to put on his dewiest, most sincere and seducto-tronic evil blue honky-eyes, and blast out a few meaty little moments. "OOooow-how!" he yells when Brainerd blasts an air horn in his ear so loud it blows his hair sideways at a basketball game.

Believe it or not, there are some great bits of art in "Flubber" -- the best minds of our 3-D computer animation generation cranked out a fairly mind-blowing scene in which the mucilaginous Jell-O-shot homunculus creatures perform a Busby Berkeley mambo spectacular.

McDonald was clearly given some wiggle room with the text, which mostly results in gutteral chuffs, eye-rolling and sarcastic, chimp interjections like "Och!"

What is clear is that McDonald had a lot of fun horsing around with Robin Williams -- they were, I presume, a stimulating influence on each other. At one point, McDonald gets to crank out an athletic St. Vitus dance when he accidentally ingests a tennis-ball-size clod of flubber and it weasels its way through his digestive system -- he becomes so distressed he starts speaking to his Mummy in German, a bit I very much doubt was scripted. But was it a bit of McDonald shtick or Robin Williams shtick? Only one thing is certain -- Chris McDonald is consistently as good as anybody, Robin Williams included, even pre-"Flubber," when Williams was in his coked-out prime.

But still, McDonald's oeuvre is a slurry of endless stink ponies, shuffling down to video oblivion. He did some independent films: "Lawn Dogs" (1997) and "Children on Their Birthdays" (2002). You'd think an actor would pick an indie, presumably for little cash, in which he could thrive artistically -- no such luck. These films are no fun at all -- draggy, atmospheric bummers trying to achieve some kind of wannabe Tennessee Williams Poetry of White Trash Creepiness and Repressed Sexuality and ... not succeeding. Yawn.

There was a spate of minor horror flicks; "The Skulls" (2000), in which he plays an Ivy League angry honky prick guy, and "The Faculty" (1998), in which McDonald plays Elijah Wood's dad, who is in league with the high school faculty, who is in league with Satan -- a small, thankless role, but McDonald did get to grow an unsettling goatee.

I am hoping that in the oncoming years, McDonald gets roles like the one in "Spy Kids II: Island of Lost Dreams" (2002), in which he plays the president of the United States. It's a small, over-the-top role in a smart, over-the-top film. In his best moment, McDonald is announcing some very bad news. He has a folder under his arm, and it looks like he is trying to twist a key off a keychain, unsuccessfully. He starts his line looking down sadly at the keys -- he's trying to be brave, but he's on the verge of losing it. His voice trembles: "If the Transblooker device gets into the wrong hands ... (He gets exasperated with the key thing. He smiles, he frowns. He whips the folder out from under his arm and flaps it into a desperate shrug, his nose scrunched in vast disgust -- this morphs into a sly parody of a macho grief-face, like Mel Gibson wailing in "Lethal Weapon II" -- all this happens in approximately two seconds.) "We're doomed." (Secret Service agents drag him offscreen. He claws away from them, and his head re-emerges.) "We're doooooomed!!!"

Maybe Christopher McDonald likes his unusual fame niche. Maybe he doesn't want more recognition. Selfishly, though, I'd like to see more of him: As he gets older, maybe the brainless studio whores over there in Satan-land will realize he's a national treasure -- a fiendishly brilliant comic actor on a par with Peter Sellars, Alec Guinness, John Gielgud ... all he needs is MATERIAL, YOU SHORTSIGHTED, CRETINOUS GREEDBAGS. For the love of Christ, somebody, please, PLEASE give that beautiful bastard a DECENT SCRIPT!

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