Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

Name: Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind
Genre: Movie/Mini-Series, Documentary
Released: July 16, 2018
Rating: 78

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Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews

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Series Details & Credits

HBO | Release Date: July 16, 2018

Summary: The life and career of comedian Robin Williams is covered via clips, some never-before-seen, as well as interviews from Billy Crystal, Eric Idle, Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, Steve Martin, Pam Dawber and Robin Williams' son, Zak Williams in this documentary directed by Marina Zenovich.

Genre(s): Movie/Mini-Series, Documentary

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Critic Reviews

100

Mick LaSalle

Jul 13, 2018

Season 1 Review: Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind captures that special quality that Williams had, the extra quality that went beyond the laughs, that communicated his whole being. Read full review

Mark A. Perigard

Jul 16, 2018

Season 1 Review: The two-hour documentary Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind captures the magic and the mania that was the iconic comic. Bursting with hilarious clips and bloopers, it’s almost as good as having Williams back. Read full review

Kristi Turnquist

Jul 13, 2018

Season 1 Review: Though many aspects of Williams’ life were sad, for two hours, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind brings him back to life, showcasing the brilliance, impact, and vulnerability that made Williams special, and that make his death still feel like such a loss. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Jul 13, 2018

Season 1 Review: A documentary that’s sharp-edged, humane, and deeply researched enough to take you closer to the manic engine of Williams’ brilliance and pain than you were before. Read full review

Sophie Gilbert

Jul 16, 2018

Season 1 Review: The pleasure of Come Inside My Mind is in the opportunity it offers to spend time with Williams, not just as a performer, but as a spirit whose exuberance was so contagious and so winning that his death in 2014 felt to many like a personal loss. Read full review

Collider Matt Goldberg

Jul 13, 2018

Season 1 Review: What Zenovich is able to show consistently through Come Inside My Mind is that Williams, despite a unique and iconic persona, had a remarkable amount of diversity in his life and career. Where the documentary really shines is in trying to drill down and figure out the creative impulse in Williams. Read full review

Inkoo Kang

Jul 13, 2018

Season 1 Review: You can feel the absence of things left out or glossed over, a tingle that lets you know you’re being manipulated--and not especially well. The new HBO documentary Robin Williams: Come Into My Mind should give viewers a lot of these tingles. Read full review

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Bertaut1

Sep 28, 2019

A rudimentary bio-doc that isn't very insightful, but which features excellent archival material

Directed by Marina Zenovich, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is a rudimentary bio-doc that fails to live up to its subtitle. It asks questions about Williams, gives him a platform, marvelsA rudimentary bio-doc that isn't very insightful, but which features excellent archival material

Directed by Marina Zenovich, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is a rudimentary bio-doc that fails to live up to its subtitle. It asks questions about Williams, gives him a platform, marvels at his on-stage energy, but never manages to elucidate much in the way of psychological insight. Perhaps a little too respectful of her subject, Zenovich avoids hagiography, but so too does she gloss over some of the darker aspects, although it's certainly laudable that she refuses to allow the manner of his death become the defining moment of his life. What the film does have going for it, however, is the archival footage, which shows Williams at the height of his powers. And, ultimately, the quality of this footage offsets the film's failure to offer a deep dive into his thought-processes.

Featuring interviews with people such as Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, and Pam Dawber, the film includes clips from Williams's 1986 performance at the Met Opera House; the outtakes from his improvisations explaining the uses of a stick during a 1991 appearance on Sesame Street; and his improvised "acceptance speech" at the 2003 Critics Choice Awards, where he was nominated for Best Actor alongside Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis, and the result was a draw between Nicholson and Day-Lewis ("it's been a wonderful evening for me, to walk away with nothing; coming here with no expectations, leaving here with no expectations. It's pretty much been a Buddhist evening for me").

From a biographical perspective, the film details such events as his 1973 scholarship to Juilliard, where he and Christopher Reeve were the only students selected by John Houseman to join the Advanced Program; how the death of John Belushi led to Williams getting clean; his celebrated appearance alongside Steve Martin in Mike Nichols's 1988 production of Waiting for Godot at the Lincoln Centre; checking himself into rehab in 2014 to treat his remerging alcoholism; his diagnosis with early stage Parkinson's; and ultimately, his suicide.

Also touched on is that his father was a very stern man, and it was when a young Williams saw him laugh at Jonathan Winters, that he first began to consider a career in comedy. Also interesting is how he changed the manner in which sitcoms were shot. When he started on Mork & Mindy in 1978, all American sitcoms were shot with a three-camera set-up (one for the wide shot, the others for close-ups). However, due to his unpredictability, he would rarely stick to his marks, making it impossible for close-ups, as the operators never knew where he was going to go. And so, the show's executive producer Garry Marshall introduced a fourth camera, whose sole purview was to follow Williams.

The use of audio interviews with Williams, which act as narration, see him more contemplative; "I don't tell jokes, I use characters as a vehicle for me. I seldom just talk as myself." This is, of course, a key admission, and is one of the main themes of the film – the private man hiding behind the public entertainer. However, the film fails to explore this dissonance; it's touched on a few times, but it's never examined in any detail. Indeed, for a film which literally invites the audience into the subject's mind, there's very little of any psychological worth.

Another problem is Zenovich's unwillingness to depict some of the darker aspects of his life. Lip-service is given to some of it, but nothing more (Elayne Boosler talks about being his girlfriend whilst giving her blessing for him to be with other women; Billy Crystal explains that he was addicted to audience reaction; Steve Martin discusses how difficult he found sobriety). However, apart from these brief moments, Zenovich never examines any of the issues thrown up. And as much as they are glossed over, there's nothing at all on Dawber's claim that Williams fondled her and exposed himself to her on the set of Mork & Mindy, even if only to reiterate that she was never offended or threatened.

The film's structure is also a little unusual, focusing on his rise in the 70s and 80s and the last few years of his life, without spending a huge amount of time looking at the intervening years. Because of this, when his 2014 suicide comes, it feels very abrupt.

The argument could be made that Williams was notoriously difficult to know even in real life, hence we shouldn't expect a documentary to lay him bare, but the fact is that Zenovich doesn't really try. And I can't help but think that presenting some of the darker times would have been a more truthful approach; it wouldn't have tarnished his legacy, but it would have made for a deeper film. In the end, Williams was consumed by his demons, but Come Inside My Mind sidelines those same demons as much as possible, hoping, perhaps, that we remember the laughter, without dwelling on the sadness.… Expand

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Season 1

78
- Season 1 Overview
  Air Date: July 16, 2018
- No episode information is currently available for this season