People are either excised or combined together and whole passages of a persons life can also sometimes be completely ignored in order to focus on the most important parts of the narrative of the subjects life.

A master comedian and a genius at improvisation, he also managed to carve out a niche as a well respected actor in both comedy and drama.

Though he could be completely bombastic and off-the-wall, he still had the ability to reign himself in and give a touching subtle performance once in a while; something that indeed helped him win an Oscar for his work in Good Will Hunting (1997).

But while he proved himself time and again to be a master at so many different things, it unfortunately made it difficult to find the right kinds of roles for him.

Oh sure, he had plenty of great films come his way, and many of those movies were no doubt improved by his presence.

But, when you become an extremely popular actor in the publics eye, Hollywood might over time begin to believe they can harness that popularity and work to control it.

Thats why at certain parts of his career, Robin was finding himself acting in roles that didnt use his talents effectively.

These were movies that more or less began to follow a formula; ones that thought they knew what a Robin Williams picture was all about, but in actuality had no clue.

These kinds of pictures tended to play off both sides of his persona on screen, the affable clown who works a mile a minute, as well as the warm-hearted every man who stood up for the right things and gave hope to the helpless.

In the earlier part of the decade, Williams had two monster hits with his work as the Genie in Aladdin (1992) and as a cross-dressing nanny in Mrs.

Doubtfire (1993), but soon after, his film output got a lot shakier.

It became clear over time that Hollywood saw Robin as a finely tuned machine that could bring the right kind of magic to any story, but that was not really the case at all.

Robin Williams, like any other actor, wanted to tackle something challenging, giving him the opportunity to surprise his audience, and if youve ever seen Robin perform in front of a crowd, youll definitely see that desire within him to be unpredictable.

Restraining him to a formula is not the greatest use of his talent, and thats something thats clear in his output from the 90s.

Some movies of this period did turn out well (1995s Jumanji and 1996s The Birdcage ), but there were plenty that didnt (1996s Jack, 1997s Flubber, as well as Bicentennial Man and Jakob the Liar, both from 1999).

And when you look at the movies from this era that clearly didnt work, you can see one thing that they all had in common; schmaltz.

Its unfortunate to think that for a time that this was all that Hollywood thought that Robin Williams movies measured up to, this excessive sentimentality thats only punctuated with his natural talent for improvisation.

Sure, some of his successes from year past had their sentimental moments, especially in his beloved turn in Dead Poets Society (1989), but thats not what defined those movies in a nutshell either.

Its a good thing that Good Will Hunting came along to break that cycle and leader to more serious and often darker roles later on for Robin, like One Hour Photo and Insomnia (both from 2002).

Unfortunately, before that would happen, Robin had to go through what is undoubtedly the worst movie of his entire career, and one that represented the worst of what Hollywood believed a Robin Williams movie could be; the travesty thats known as Patch Adams (1998).

Its a movie that also uses its schmaltz in a manipulative way, believing that tugging at the heart strings will compensate for the narrative shortcomings.

No, what makes the movie so despising is the way that it was framed in order to be made more marketable, particularly towards favor during awards season.

Movies, particularly ones that are taken from real life stories, take liberties all the time in order to craft a film more towards appealing to the widest possible audience.

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