Robin Williams carries a funny, uneven family comedy that takes divorce seriously without examining its father’s deception closely enough. Chris Columbus makes the family pain convincing, but the sentiment and the 125-minute running time need firmer handling.
Mrs. Doubtfire asks us to accept a father’s elaborate deception because he cannot bear to be separated from his children. Chris Columbus makes that an effective basis for a family comedy, with enough pain beneath Robin Williams’s performance to stop the disguise becoming the whole joke. We recommend it, with reservations about how readily it excuses Daniel and how long it takes to do so. At 125 minutes, it allows a nimble comic idea rather too much time to settle down.
Williams is the reason the arrangement holds. His abrupt verbal detours give Daniel an unruliness that the film’s reassuring view of family life cannot quite contain. We laughed hardest at the nanny’s unkind remarks, where Williams gives the disguise a welcome streak of bad temper. Mrs. Doubtfire becomes entertaining company in her own right, with more bite than the father’s plea for sympathy. The performance is also persuasive about Daniel’s distress, which matters when the plot asks us to overlook so much.
Sally Field’s Miranda provides a necessary check on that charm. Field makes it possible to recognise how tiring a funny man can be when somebody else must take responsibility, and the film improves when her frustration is allowed to count. We should be able to care about Daniel’s separation from his children without assuming that his wishes settle the matter. The screenplay, credited to Leslie Dixon and Randi Mayem Singer, is less convincing whenever it expects affection to excuse dishonesty.
Donald McAlpine’s cinematography keeps the performances easy to read, giving us room to appreciate Williams without making Field’s quieter contribution seem incidental. Angelo P. Graham’s production design makes the domestic setting feel worth Daniel’s efforts to return to it, which helps us understand the deception without approving of it. Marit Allen’s costume design helps Mrs. Doubtfire register as someone with an existence beyond the immediate joke. The disguise invites scrutiny, and the visual work sensibly keeps our attention on the person wearing it.
The indulgence is more apparent in Raja Gosnell’s editing, which lets the comic turns interrupt the story often enough for the pauses to show. Individually, a good many of those turns earn their place; together, they make a long evening out of a straightforward predicament. Howard Shore’s score encourages tenderness where the performances have already given us sufficient reason to feel it. The extra prompting is tiresome, particularly when Columbus moves from broad comedy into passages that insist on how much everybody is hurting.
By the standards of family farce, Mrs. Doubtfire is unusually willing to admit that parents can love their children and still make each other miserable. That gives the silliness some consequence, even when the writing takes shortcuts around responsibility. Its warmth is persuasive enough for an evening’s entertainment, provided the father’s distress is not mistaken for permission to do whatever he likes. There is plenty to argue about once the laughter has stopped. Choose it for Williams, and allow for a generous helping of reassurance between the laughs.
