Mrs. Doubtfire

Mrs. Doubtfire; comedy, USA, 1993; D: Chris Columbus, S: Robin Williams, Sally Field, Lisa Jakub, Matthew Lawrence, Mara Wilson, Pierce Brosnan, Harvey Fierstein, Polly Holliday

San Francisco. Daniel is an unemployed voice actor who is saddened when his wife Miranda divorces him. The court also decides that she takes custody of their three kids: Lydia, Chris and Natalie. In order to spend more time with the kids, Daniel thinks of an unusual plan: his brother will use all his make up skill to disguise Daniel as a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Doubtfire, and get a job as a nanny in Miranda's house. And he succeeds. The kids get quite fond of Mrs. Doubtfire with time, but then they discover the truth. During a diner with Miranda's new lover, Stuart, everyone discovers Daniel's secret.

Popular "Mrs. Doubtfire" is a likeable gender-switch comedy in which director Chris Columbus sufficiently mixes family comedy with emotions, while Robin Williams delivered one of the best performances of his career in his double role as Daniel and Mrs. Doubtfire—especially in 'her' amazing voice transformation and Irish accent. Despite the flatness of jokes, which tends to be populist and aimed more towards the broader audience, some of the gags are still hilarious, like the one where Mrs. Doubtfire leans towards the stove, not noticing his fake breasts were set on fire or when he loses his false teeth in the glass of champagne to (auto-ironically) adds: "Carpe dentum". Basically, most of the gags are based on the the man's misadventures in playing a woman's role, and the story is funny, but most of its gags and male-female observations are directly borrowed from "Tootsie's" repertoire, and thus don't seem original. Williams is great, the rest not so much: the director's approach is not always successful, especially in some forced messages, sentimental scenes, the uneven subplot in which Pierce Brosnan's character was degraded into a one-dimensional bad guy and humiliated by Mrs. Doubtfire (there were such stupid lines like the one where 'she' says that his Mercedes "compensates for his genitals") and inappropriately grotesque gags towards the slightly annoying ending, which somewhat overshadow the first charming impression. Nonetheless, this is still a fun comedy with a few surprises that give it a certain dose of freshness.

Grade:++