On M List of Movie Reviews
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Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
8/25
8/25:
The last time I saw Mrs. Doubtfire was in a theatre, and I hadn't revisited it until now and thought
it would still be funny.
And...wow, it's so bad. For starters, Robin Williams talk way too much on top of his 1,000 different voices.
Clearly, he gives an overdone, immature performance. At one point, Pierce Brosnan, a true Briton, asked him
something like, "That accent...whereabouts in England are you from? It sure sounds nothing familiar,"
but never got a straight answer. I didn't appreciate the part when Mrs. Doubtfire exploited Stu's pepper
allergy; it would've killed him, or was that really an attempted murder?
However, the makeup team deserves the Oscar; it's very impressive work, yet Dustin Hoffman's in
Tootsie is still the most natural I've seen on a man. Here's my problem, but
I'll let the following trivia from IMDb speak for itself first: "The film was shot over 70 days with 40 being
taken up with Robin's makeup which took 4 and a half hours to complete with work starting on him at 5 AM so
that he was ready for filming to start around 9." How can Mrs. Doubtfire have the time to do it repeatedly in
the restaurant and still look great? By the way, the prosthetic mask was never actually worn, and it only
showed up at the end to reach for the gag effect.
Now, we have the mother of all time: how could the wife not recognize her husband through Mrs. Doubtfire?
They've had sex many times for over fourteen years, and she still can't do it? Ditto for the kids (minus the sex,
of course). I've seen twentysomething movies featuring Robin Williams which comes to roughly forty hours total,
and therefore, I am able to spot him immediately. When the wife and kids discovered the truth for the
first time, I suddenly found the whole thing creepy.
Elsewhere, it's a mistake to give Harvey Fierstein a small amount of screen time. I thought he would play
a big role, but nope. As a matter of fact, he could've been a valuable asset for Robin Williams to make the
restaurant scenes easier to swallow. On the other hand, Sally Field is ridiculous; it's always the same face
she makes. The first two kids are passable, but the youngest is super annoying and should've been dropped.
All in all, Some Like It Hot and
Tootsie are so much better than Mrs. Doubtfire.