Posted: Fri., Dec. 31, 1971, 11:00pm PT

Now You See Him, Now You Don't

By Variety Staff

Walt Disney. Director Robert Butler; Producer Ron Miller; Screenplay Joseph L. McEveety; Camera Frank Phillips; Editor Cotton Warburton; Music Robert F. Brunner; Art Director John B. Mansbridge, Walter Tyler

Kurt Russell Cesar Romero Joe Flynn Jim Backus William Windom Michael McGreevey

Virtually all the key creative elements which early in 1970 made The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes encore superbly in Now You See Him, Now You Don't [from a story by Robert L. King]. Discovery of a fluid which makes people and objects invisible provides the inventive plot peg for uproarious golf games and car chase sequences involving students, professors, police and criminals.

Encoring players include Kurt Russell, this time as a college student who accidentally discovers the invisible potion, Michael McGreevey as his sidekick, Joe Flynn as a befuddled dean, Cesar Romero as a local gangster who plans to foreclose on the school to make it a gambling casino-hotel, and Richard Bakalyan as Romero's right-hand flunkie.

Flynn's camping is a major comedy prop as the story develops. To raise mortgage money, he enters a golf game with philanthropist Jim Backus, and aided by the invisible students scores many holes-in-one and a host of laughs. Romero later steals the magic fluid to rob a bank, cueing a climactic car chase which comes across with spectacularly funny impact.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1972. Running time: 88 MIN.