Mrs. Doubtfire Made $441 Million. It's Still a Custody Fight in a Latex Mask
Robin Williams is wonderful in Chris Columbus's 1993 hit. The movie around him asks you to cheer a father who spends weeks deceiving his own children.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Mrs. Doubtfire opened the day before Thanksgiving in 1993, cost $25 million and took in about $441 million around the world, second that year only to Jurassic Park, another picture about a creature nobody should have let into the house. It won the Oscar for makeup. Audiences gave it an A CinemaScore. By every measure the accountants use, it's a triumph, and I'd like a word with it anyway.
The plot, from Anne Fine's novel Madame Doubtfire: Daniel Hillard, a voice actor played by Robin Williams, loses custody in his divorce because he has no job and no home. So he puts on a prosthetic face, a wig and an accent and gets himself hired as his ex-wife's nanny. His children don't recognize him. His ex-wife, who was married to him, doesn't recognize him. I once had a barber recognize me from the back of my head after ten years away, and this woman can't pick her husband out of a cardigan.
That's the problem, and the movie half knows it. Roger Ebert gave it two and a half stars, doubted anyone would fall for the disguise, and judged the film not as amusing as the premise. The joke only works if everyone near Daniel is a little dim, so the script makes them dim on demand. Sally Field's Miranda gets the worst of it. She's written as a woman whose crimes are having a job and wanting a quiet house, which in a 1993 family comedy is a hanging offense.
Look at what Daniel actually does. He spends the movie sabotaging Miranda's new boyfriend, Pierce Brosnan's Stu, including spiking his dinner with pepper he's allergic to, then saves him from choking and is treated as a hero. If a stepfather did that in any other movie, it would be the third act of a thriller, and the music would be cellos.
To its credit, the film doesn't let him win in court. When the disguise collapses, the judge gives Miranda full custody and Daniel supervised visits. Then the movie blinks. Miranda sees him playing Mrs. Doubtfire on a children's TV show and decides the kids need him after school after all. The lesson it settles on is that a man who lies elaborately enough, and charmingly enough, will eventually get the system to bend. That's not a family comedy. That's how most of Congress got elected.
None of this is Williams's fault. He's the reason the thing works at all, and the deleted scenes released in 2016 show a man improvising so fast the crew should have charged admission. A 2014 Complex essay argued it was a quietly progressive divorce film, and there's a fair case for that. But a great performance can make a bad idea feel like a good one, the way a great salesman can sell you a boat in Nebraska. Fox spent years trying to make a sequel, and in 2011 Williams said they could never write it. He was right, and it was the kindest review the idea ever got.
Charm is a fine thing in a father, but you'll notice the children are always the last to find out what it cost.