Robin McLaurin Williams was an American actor and comedian who’s best known for his improvisational skills. He created a wide variety of characters on the spur of the moment. He is regarded by many people to have been one if not the best comedian ever.
His career took off after having played the role of Mork in the all-time 1978 favourite TV series Mork & Mindy. Since then, he worked with some of the best actors and directors in Hollywood.
His untimely death at age 63, left the world a much sadder place. He left a void no one can fill and that’s why the films he left us are so precious.
In this blog post, we are going to have a look at the Robin Williams movies that are available on the Netflix streaming service at the moment.
Top Robin Williams Movies on Netflix
Here is a selection we made of some of his most iconic movies. After you’ve watched these, go check out all the others. Titles such as The World According To Garp, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Cadillac Man, The Fisher King, Bicentennial Man, The Birdcage, and so many more.
Good Morning Vietnam (1988)
Good Morning Vietnam features Robin Williams as Adrian Cronauer, a DJ sent to Vietnam to host a radio show. The army loves it but the administration is not so impressed, due to his desecrating humour and general undisciplined behaviour.
The movie goes on to reveal the truth behind his friendship with Vietnamese Tuan, and the forces at play in the chain of command to try to get rid of him.
This war-com is a classic and definitely worth watching, especially for those who have not seen it before. Who can forget Adrian Cronauer’s opening greeting to the troops?
Jumanji (1995)
Robin Williams plays Alan Parrish who has been stuck for 26 years in a board game. One of the most entertaining Netflix movies for the whole family. Three sequels have been made due to its success, the 2017 and 2019 ones starring Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black being the most notable.
Alan Parrish is a kid living at home with his parents. One day, after school he is chased by bullies and takes refuge at his father’s shoe factory where he inadvertently causes an accident and breaks a machine. He runs away but is caught up by the bullies who beat him and steal his bicycle. On the way home, he hears the noise of tribal-like drums and discovers it comes from an old board game.
That evening he argues with his father who wants to punish Alan for the factory incident by sending him to boarding school. When his friend Sarah Whittle goes round to return Alan’s bicycle, he invites her to play the board game with him.
She accepts and the game starts. But the pieces move on their own according to the throw of the dice and a suggestion magically appears in the luminescent dome at the centre of the board. After Alan throws a 5, the game tells him to wait in the jungle until someone else rolls a 5 or an 8. At that point, the game sucks the boy into the dome and Sarah is attacked by bats causing her to flee.
The rest of the film is about the events that take place 26 years later when two siblings and their parents move into Alan’s former house and find the game. They start playing and what happens is up to you to enjoy!
Mrs Doubtfire (1993)
Mrs Doubtfire is a rare movie where one can quickly turn laughs into tears. Directed by Chris Columbus, it won an Academy Award for Best make-up.
Robin Williams plays Daniel Hillard/Euphegenia Doubtfire. Miranda, Daniel’s wife (Sally Fields) considers him highly unreliable and after a disastrous day decides to divorce him and is granted full custody of their three children.
Daniel is very fond of his kids and does everything he can to reconstruct his life for them. When he learns that his ex-wife is looking for a nanny, he gets rid of the competition and interviews for the job disguised as Mrs Doubtfire. His costume and make-up make him look like a middle-aged English lady.
This movie is a great and very entertaining one that has brought such an amazing character close to the hearts of many.
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Robin Williams plays John Keating, a teacher of English literature in a very elite preparatory all-male school located in Vermont. His teaching methods are unusual and a group of students takes his views on changing their lives to make them extraordinary, very seriously, even reviving a “club” called the Dead Poets Society of which Keating was a part when he attended the very same school back in the day. For the group of friends, poetry becomes the means by which they will gain the consciousness to take their lives into their own hands and live according to their own terms.
An unforgettable performance by the lead and all the young actors involved, like Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, among others, are formidable.
Good Will Hunting (1997)
This film available on Netflix was co-written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon who won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and directed by Gus Van Sant. Robin won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is a young man who works as an aimless janitor at MIT. He is also a self-taught math genius from a poor and rundown neighbourhood. He has a group of friends from his hood of which Chuckie (Ben Affleck) is his best one.
When prof. Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) writes a very complicated equation on a blackboard in the corridor for the mathematics students to solve, Will is the only one able to solve it at night when no one is watching. When the professors discover his abilities he runs away. That night Will and his friends get into a fight and Will Gets arrested. Prof. Lambeau attends his hearing and manages to get him freed if he agrees to attend his maths lessons and goes into psychotherapy.
Robin Williams played Dr Sean Maguire, the only psychotherapist that Will respects. His best Supporting Actor Oscar was definitely very well deserved! So watch his great performance on Netflix any time.
Aladdin (1992)
Robin Williams plays the Genie in Aladdin, the Disney movie. It’s the cartoon story, taken from One Thousand and One Nights, of a kindhearted street urchin who falls in love with Princess Jasmine and, with the help of his friend Abu, the cheeky and mischievous little monkey, fights the evil Jafar to save the realm and marry the Princess. It remains an all-time classic.
It was the first time a famous actor lent his voice to an animated character and, of course, his talent in the role of the blue Genie was so amazing, that many other actors followed suit by starring as voice cast members in other animated features.
This Robin Williams movie will forever remain one of the children’s favourite films and one of this actor’s most beloved performances all around the world.
Hook (1991)
In this film, Steven Spielberg directs a stellar cast: Robin Williams as Peter Banning/Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell, Bob Hoskins as Smee and Maggie Smith as Wendy Darling.
Peter Banning is a New York lawyer and workaholic who neglects his family. After a heated argument, the family travels to London to visit Granny Wendy. One evening they attend a gala leaving the kids at home with the nanny. Upon their return, they find the house broken into and the children missing. Granny Wendy tells Peter he is the only one who can save the children because the ransom note they found was signed by Captain Hook and he is Peter Pan.
Of course, Peter Banning doesn’t believe a word, but when Tinkerbell suddenly appears to him and takes him away to Neverland with her pixie dust, he is forced to see things in a different light. With the help of Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys, Peter will have to retrieve his memory of being Peter Pan in order to save the children.
What a great duo Williams and Hoffman make. Williams and Steven Spielberg will work together again in 2001, in A.I. Artificial Intelligence. This film can also be found on Netflix.
Popeye (1980)
This is Robin Williams’ earliest leading character and came a few years before his debut. He stars alongside Shelly Duvall playing Olive Oy. The film was directed by Robert Altman.
Robbin Williams is Popeye, the strong sailorman who lands in Sweehaven in search of his father. He rents a room at the boarding house owned by Olive’s family. There he finds out that Olive is unknowingly going to be engaged to Captain Bluto a nasty, angry bully who enforces the commands of the mysterious Commodore over the whole town.
At Olive’s engagement party, she and Popeye find an abandoned baby left in a basket and decide to adopt him. They name him Swee’Pea. But because Olive has stood Bluto up and angered him terribly, Popeye will have to save Olive, the baby, her family and the town, all while still looking for his father.
The young Robin already showed lots of promise. So, watch this Netflix film and discover where the seeds of real talent came from.
4. Happy Feet (2006)
This is another animated film you can watch on Netflix in which Robin Williams, who lends his voice to four roles: Ramon, Cletus, Lovelace and the narrator, is joined by a stellar cast: Elija Wood as Mumble, Hugh Jackman as Memphis, Nicole Kidman as Norma Jean, Hugo Weaving as Noah, and Brittany Murphy as Gloria, to name but a handful.
When a male penguin emits its song and it matches the song of a female penguin, they mate for life. So, Memphis and Norma Jean are mated and they lay an egg. Memphis has to look after it while Norma Jean goes out fishing, but he drops the egg by mistake and that causes the little penguin Mumble to not be able to sing. But he is a great tap dancer!
Mumble’s adventure begins when he is exiled from his colony because he tries to win the heart of Gloria by faking his mating song.
A highly entertaining film computer-animated and directed by George Miller to watch on Netflix.
August Rush (2007)
Robin Williams stars in an interesting role in this romantic musical. He plays the part of Wizard Wallace.
Layla is a cello player and has a very strict father. When she goes to a concert and meets Louis, the singer of an Irish rock band, they have a one-night stand but their relationship ends there. She discovers to be pregnant but her father disapproves of her keeping the baby. So after a terrible argument, she runs out and is hit by a car. While she is in the hospital unconscious she gives birth prematurely but the father gives the baby up for adoption and later tells her the baby died.
After 11 years, the baby called Evan Taylor lives in an orphanage. He has the musical talent of both his father and his mother. He runs away to New York to look for his parents. While roaming the streets he meets Arthur a busker who takes him back to his place in a condemned theatre. The place is run by Wizard Wallace a vagrant musician who takes in youngsters and trains them to become buskers. When Wizard finds out how talented Evan is, he tries to get him hired at nightclubs with the name August Rush.
The story follows the search of each main character for each other and in the end, by a series of coincidences they will reunite happily.
Awakenings (1990)
Robin Williams stars alongside Robert De Niro and Max Von Sidow in this heartwrenching movie.
It’s the story of Dr Malcolm Sayer, a neurologist (Robin Williams), who discovers a drug called L-Dopa that he administers to his catatonic patients who survived encephalitis lethargica back in the 1917/1928 epidemic.
The drug works and awakens the patients from their catatonic state, but unfortunately only temporarily. Leonard (Robert De Niro) is the first patient to be “awakened” by the new drug and thinks his life has changed forever. Alongside the other “awakened” patients he stirs up a riot in order to regain his freedom from the hospital. But this emotional state triggers a series of symptoms that lead to their renewed state of catharsis.
Robin Williams gives a star performance in this tender film about life and the relationship between long-term patients and hospital staff.
Patch Adams (1998)
One of the most loved Robin Williams movies of all time. A bio-drama/comedy about the life of Dr Adams.
After spending time in a mental institution because he was suicidal, Hunter Adams (Robin Williams) finds a new purpose in life by using humour as an integration to traditional psychotherapy. He dreams of becoming a doctor.
When he leaves the institution, he enrols in medical school. His unique approach to medicine, staff relationships and patients sows good results albeit unconventionally and often criticised by mainstream doctors.
With the help of a wealthy patient he was friends with at the institution, and with other fellow medical students, he decides to open a clinic for people without means and applies his methods to their healing processes while also attending medical school.
A film to watch time and again. Great fun and a few tears as well. Epic unexpected end scene that will make everyone laugh out loud, especially the kids!
Night At The Museum (2006)
Night at the Museum was one of the hugest successful Ben Stiller movies. Robin Williams starred in it as Theodore Roosevelt. The film spawned two sequels: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian in 2009 and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb in 2014. Robin Williams stars in all three films. They are also making an animated version for the Disney Plus streaming service that will be released in 2022.
Larry Daley, a man with an unstable work history manages to get a job working as a security guard at the Natural History Museum in New York City to keep seeing his son after his divorce.
During his first night on the job, he discovers that the exhibits come to life wreaking havoc. After getting things back under control larry decides he’s had enough and quits the job but just then, his son arrives with his step-father and seeing how proud his son is of him, decides to stay. The second night on the job is even more chaotic than the first.
Other cast members comprise Owen Wilson as Jedediah a cowboy, Rami Malek as a Pharoah, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs as the old security guards, and many more.
A great watch for all the family. The other movies in the series are just as good.
FAQs
Is Awakenings on Netflix?
As we saw before, Awakenings is on Netflix. Enjoy the film that sees two huge Academy Award-winning actors work side by side.
Is The Fisher King on Netflix?
Regrettably, of all the Robin Williams movies you can find on Netflix, The Fisher King is not among them. You will have to watch this Robin Williams movie somewhere else.
Does Netflix have the movie What Dreams May Come?
Yes, What Dreams May Come is on the Netflix streaming service. Another of Robin Williams’ films starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra and, Max Von Sydow.
Conclusion
Hollywood legend, comedy actor, dramatic actor, Academy Award winner, and above all a great man, Robin Williams won the hearts of many people across generations. Netflix has most of his movies on its streaming service available for you to watch right now!
Robin Williams left a great legacy and thanks to Netflix et al. his memory will never die!
