Mrs. Doubtfire

When I was a kid my parents showed me Mrs. Doubtfire. I thought it was hilarious. I loved Robin Williams as a kid and this movie had me laughing so hard. The odd thing is, I remember seeing it once and then oddly never seeing it again. Maybe it was because we had recorded it on VHS and those were easy to lose or tape over, but I never understood why I never was able to watch that movie again... until I watched it over a decade later.

Now this isn't the first time I've seen Mrs. Doubtfire since I was kid, but it had been quite a while while I saw it on HBO one night and decided to re-watch it. Again, I laughed my ass off. Especially over a decade later when I was paying more attention because I now soak up everything that has Robin Williams in it. But I also found it incredibly amazing how mature of a movie this is, despite thinking that this movie was a family film. I now understood why my parents thought it'd be best if this movie just disappeared until I was older. I disagree with their decision however because I also watched this movie with a new appreciation for how smart this movie is and how freaking talented Robin Williams really is.

Mrs. Doubtfire stars Robin Williams as Daniel Hillard. Daniel is an out of work actor who adores his three children. His wife (played by Sally Field) is much more successful career-wise and right off the bat you figure out that their marriage is in trouble.

Actually you don't really figure that out at all, in the first 10 minutes of the movie they get a divorce. Not much of a backstory or set up, they just get a divorce.

I'll talk more about this when I talk about Miranda (the wife) and Sally Field's performance, but that's the first thing that amazed me about this movie. How quickly their relationship ends and how quickly they get divorced. The movie starts off as this fun family comedy but quickly dissolves into a very serious issue, Divorce.

It also amazes me how quickly these two become arch enemies. Daniel is not trying to get his wife back throughout this movie and while he doesn't wish harm upon her, you can tell he's angry about the divorce and the effect its having on him and his kids.

So they have a custody hearing and the courts almost immediately give full custody to Daniel's wife. Daniel finds this unacceptable as he loves spending time with his kids and doesn't want to be apart from them. But Miranda feels Daniel is too childish and immature to actually take care of their children so he cuts him out and decides that she needs to hire a housekeeper to take care of the children and clean the house.

And on another side of this film I never got as a kid, she's kind of right.

I mean as a kid I always saw Robin Williams as just a lovable doof and really not capable of doing anything wrong. He seemed like a great father to these kids and I never understood why Miranda was being so difficult about it.

But watching this with grown up eyes, I realize there is a little bit of a truth to her concerns. Now I think they are definitely exaggerated with an attempt to make her kind of an adversary of the film, but Daniel really is kind of a slacker. His new apartment really is as his daughter calls it "detestable" and there is room for growth by the end of the film. Which makes it a good development story for this man child trying to get his kids back. So while, again, the quarrel that Miranda and Daniel have is exaggerated a little bit for dramatic effect, as a grown up I understand it a little bit more.

So in order to see his kids more often, Daniel decides that he's going first troll the shit out of his ex-wife in one of the most hilarious prank phone call scenes in movie history.

Now he does have a method to his madness in this mad troll session. He ends up fooling his ex-wife into believing that he is a 60 year old woman and getting the job as her new house keeper. He of course gives himself the name Mrs. Doubtfire and then goes to his brother (who is gay, but like way over the top gay because it was the 90s) to get the perfect disguise for him to fully accept the role.

And again, as a kid, I don't think I truly understood how crazy this was. Even now men dressing up as women can be considered strange, I can only imagine what people thought when this movie first came out. As a kid, I didn't think anything about it, it was Robin Williams, the man could do no wrong. Him dressing up as a woman was funny but it wasn't necessarily strange, he was doing it for a good reason and that was to see his kids. You sympathized with the hero in this story and anything that he did was totally accepted.

And Williams kills it by the way. Again, its another thing I just accepted as second nature because again, Robin Williams could do no wrong, but its really funny how consistent he is with his voice and the character of Mrs. Doubtfire. That was something I appreciated more as an adult and at the same time, I enjoyed actually understanding the conflict and reasoning of Daniel Hillard. Its a lot smarter of a movie that I think I ever gave it credit for as a kid. As a kid I just thought it was a funny story about a guy dressing up as an old woman to see his kid. But in reality, it feels more than that. Its still a comedy and its not like its an Oscar contender, but its much more of a laugh out loud comedy than a family film which I guess I thought it was.

The rest of the movie is him trying to keep his cover, enjoying time with his kids, and nosing into the business of his wife who is starting to see new people (Pierce Brosnan in fact). With the quick wit of Robin Williams, Mrs. Doubtfire not only has a lot of funny lines, but it also has a surprisingly profound message and views on divorce and overall just has a lot of heart to it.

But one of the biggest thing I found interesting was the portrayal of the ex-wife and the performance of Sally Field.

While I do see hints of the movie trying to tell the audience that divorce always has two sides to it and it tries to give some sympathy towards Miranda in this movie, I never realized how much of a bitch this movie makes her out to be.

First off, the terms of their divorce really make her out to be the bad guy in this flick. I mean these two had a marriage that produced three children and she goes for full custody of these kids with limited visitation privileges? I mean again, I do see her side a little bit in this film, but Daniel is not a bad guy. Its not like he's selling drugs or something like that, and she wants full custody right off the bat.

Now, to be fair, my parents are happily married. I know people who are kids of divorce and while I don't know exactly how it goes, I do now that a lot of those divorces ended in shared custody because while the parents didn't love each other anymore, they still respected the fact that their ex-spouse was the father or mother of their children.

This movie really makes Miranda out to be a stone cold bitch who doesn't care about the fact that even when Daniel gets a job and fixes up his place still limits his visitation rights.

I mean I understand it a lot more now that I'm older, but as a kid I didn't understand it at all. Probably some of the reason that my parents didn't let me watch this movie that much when I was much younger because it really does hit on some issues that may or may not have been over my head at the time.

On a somewhat related note, College Humor did a list on their blog of 8 things that were kind of inconsistent in Mrs. Doubtfire, its a pretty good list and some of it hits on some of the points I've been making in this post. Take a read and enjoy.

But overall, I was impressed of how real the relationships in this movie feel. The relationship Daniel has with his children, the relationship or lack there of that he has with his ex-wife. Even Pierce Brosnan, who as a kid I of course hated because he was a rival to Robin Williams (Again, the man cannot to wrong in my book) really did a good job in this film and became more of a character as opposed to just the handsome rival I always thought he was when I was a kid.

Mrs. Doubtfire is one of those movies that its hard for me to really say anything horrible about it because its such a nostalgic treasure. Especially watching it now, not just with the passing of Robin Williams, but also just rediscovering the intelligent thought that went behind it.

I guess if I'll say anything, there are a couple of jokes that while at the time nobody thought too much about it, now are pretty off color. Furthermore, while I enjoyed understanding more about Daniel as a character more, I do realize why I liked him so much because he is in essence just Robin Williams. That's how I saw him as a kid and that's really what he is. I still think its smarter than I gave it credit for, but Daniel probably could have been a more developed character as opposed to just a quick witted actor... like Robin Williams is. Not saying Williams wasn't an interesting person, but he probably could have done more than just play himself.

Overall, I'm figuring out that I definitely poorly categorized Mrs. Doubtfire as a kid. To me it always seemed like a family film. And while I can still probably make an argument why I think its important for kids (probably older kids) to see this movie, I am realizing that its a PG-13 comedy. But its not a stupid comedy film like Dumb and Dumber, its got a lot of heart to it and that's kind of a dying breed. While there is immature humor in this movie, it just always seemed to me like it was a different caliber of comedy than I've seen since.

Once again, its the kind of movie that makes you miss Robin Williams even more. His quick wit is just down right entertaining, the premise is actually really creative, and like I've repeated over and over, this movie is smarter than I originally thought.

But those are my thoughts on Mrs. Doubtfire, what do you think of it? Comment and Discuss below. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 and send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me you can get updates on future movie news and reviews.

I'll leave you with this. Of course someone had to take this childhood classic of mine and make a trailer recutting it as a horror film... and its pretty damn good. Enjoy!