Random Mrs. Doubtfire Is Actually A Dark Film About An Extremely Deranged Man (16 items)

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  (#13) That Trans-Shaming Scene

  You know the scene, when Mrs. Doubtfire is caught by one of the Lawrence boys peeing standing up. It's how Williams's son discovers that dear old dad is actually his nanny, and it's embarrassing for multiple reasons. First of all, we're watching a grown man urinate and there's nothing great about that visual. Secondly, the fact that a teenage boy thinks that he needs to immediately out the trans person because he WALKED IN ON THEM GOING TO THE BATHROOM is one of the dumbest, most mean-spirited conceits in a film. While it's important to look at scenes like this in context - this was the '90s and LGTBQA rights weren't as big of a deal as they are now, and also this a comedy about mistaken identity - it still stands that Robin Williams is not in the wrong in this scene despite being presented as such. Is he stalking his family? Yes. Is he pretending to be someone else in order to make his children love him? Yes. But should his rights as a human who just wants to relieve his bladder be trampled on because a nosy 13-year-old feels uncomfortable? No. 
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  (#15) There Are Farm Animals Inside A House

  Who's cleaning up the mess of having a petting zoo run wild in the house? And when you have a picturesque home in San Francisco, your first thought isn't, "You know what would make this house even nicer? Piles of animal sh*t!" Setting aside Daniel's nightmare idea of throwing the messiest birthday party in history, why would anyone want to do that to their house? Even if you live in a one-bedroom apartment in Macon, GA, you wouldn't want to track a bunch of zebras through the living room. Nothing about this scene is endearing, and if anything, it serves to make the audience truly hate Robin Williams. 
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  (#3) Sally Field Has No Idea What Her Husband Looks Like

  And more to the point, no one in this movie seems to know what Robin Williams looks like. Sure, he's buried under pounds of latex, but the face hasn't been changed all that much. It seems like all you would have to do to alleviate this issue is film a scene where someone says, "You look like my dad," or whatever, and then Mrs. Doubtfire plays air guitar with a vacuum cleaner. Was the Hillard family's home life so fractured that no one looked at anyone in the face? Who knew that Mrs. Doubtfire would be a visual representation of the unraveling of the nuclear family?
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  (#6) Mrs. Doubtfire Is the Film's True Antagonist

  While the film casts Williams's character in the most sympathetic light (he's a down on his luck dad who's lost everything), it's obvious to anyone who has ever had to deal with a deadbeat parent or known someone with a substance abuse problem that the only person standing in Daniel Hillard's way is Daniel Hillard. He begins the film with everything that anyone could want. He has a successful voice-over career, a giant house in San Francisco, three plucky kids, and he's married to Sally Field. Hillard systematically deconstructs his life until he has nothing left, and that makes him so unhappy that he transforms into a monster and tries to ruin the lives of everyone he knows. Daniel Hillard is the parent you no longer speak to, the person you've blocked on social media, and the guy from high school who's working at a car wash all rolled into one. 
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  (#1) That Attempted Murder Scene

  Could Robin Williams' attempted murder of Pierce Brosnan be folded into any of the other horrible things about Mrs. Doubtfire? Sure. But this is poor decision-making at another level, and it deserves to be fully dissected. Drunk off of the success of his scheme (and alcohol), Robin Williams traipses through the kitchen of a fancy restaurant and cavalierly pours cayenne pepper on Pierce Brosnan's meal because he's such a petty human that he wants to ruin everyone's dinner.

  At this point in the film, Daniel is nothing more than a Taco Bell employee that sneezes in the lettuce because of the lulz; he's a menace that has to be stopped. But he doesn't realize how terrible of a person he's been until Brosnan begins to choke to death on the over-seasoned shrimp. Never mind the concerns that this scene raises about Brosnan's lack of smell, the real bother is that Daniel is presented as the hero of the film for attempting to kill his romantic rival and then saving his life because he's too much of a coward to pull the trigger on his plan. 
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  (#8) Robin Williams's First Instinct After Losing His Voice-Over Gig Is To Trick His Family

  If Mrs. Doubtfire can teach us anything, it's that no one was worried about an economic collapse in the mid-'90s. When Daniel Hillard loses his swanky job as a voice-over artist in San Francisco, he doesn't begin flailing into a panic attack the same way that any other artist would if they detonated their career as expertly as he did. Instead, Daniel Hillard decides that the best course of action is trick his family into loving him by pretending to be someone else. All Robin Williams needs to do to win his family back is change who he is, or at least become the best version of himself. He needs to get a job, learn how to take care of himself (cooking, cleaning, etc), and stop looking like such a slob. And he does do those things, just in a twisted way that involves making everyone around him feel stupid for trusting him. 

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