Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

Lovely two-hour tribute. [9 - 22 Jul 2018, p.13]

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.

A fine tribute of a film.

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.

Come Inside My Mind brings tears repeatedly, but it also gives Williams life. Those moments on stage (particularly during “Comic Relief,” which showed him at his best) pop.

A lovingly crafted tribute offering many laughs, a few tears, some intriguing insights and just a constant swarm of warm memories.

It's an intimate, largely inside look at the actor-comic, a mosaic of clips and commentary from those who knew him pretty to very well. It will reinforce, not remake, his public image as a private sort of public person; a sensitive, sometimes insecure soul strapped to a rocket ship mind, a long-distance sprinter.

Ms. Zenovich manages seriousness without sentimentality or mawkishness. She doesn’t solve any mysteries, but she leaves you feeling that you know Robin Williams about as well as he’d let you.

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.

As a general survey of Williams’s life, as a collection of precious backstage outtakes, and as a nostalgic trip back into his comedy stylings, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind does the trick. It’s a sad, but satisfying, visit with a special man.

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.

It comes with immense relief, therefore, to discover after most of an hour the beginnings of a true biographical portrait, a kind that continues to grow in strength to the end. It’s a success largely abetted by an assortment of commentators, longtime friends of Williams--among them comedians like Billy Crystal, Eric Idle and Steve Martin--who provide telling observations.

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.

Viewers will walk away from this film without knowing the answer to Lipton's question--are the mechanics of Williams' intense and unpredictable riffs even knowable?--but they will likely be refreshed by a cleansing exposure to his talent, a film that doesn't shy from the well-known darkness in the star's life but prefers to remind us how funny he could be.

You may come away from Come Inside My Mind with a better understanding of who Robin Williams was, but a likelier takeaway is in the reaction of that HBO On Location crowd: the laughs, the sense of awe, the expressions that all but say, “How did he do that?”

One is left feeling that this is the generically structured and tamer “approved” version of a much richer story.

While this is the In Memoriam tribute that Williams so richly deserves and fans need, the title is misleading because that mind remains out of reach.