_Mrs. Doubtfire_
reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs


     Robin Williams in a dress. 

     The high concept description does little to allay fears that this
movie is _Tootsie_ Redux. Actually, the movie itself is much worse: with
Sally Field along for the ride as taut-jawed, about-to-be ex-wife, it's
_Tootsie_ meets another Dustin Hoffman male-ego-soother, _Kramer vs.
Kramer_. It's not pretty. 

     In scrambling to update the "man-is-a-better-woman" storyline, _Mrs.
Doubtfire_ lurches into a kind of phobic overdrive. Written by Randi Mayem
Singer and Leslie Dixon, from Anne Fine's novel, and directed by Chris
Columbus (the _Home Alone_s), the movie concerns an irresponsible but
irrepressible boy-husband named Daniel, an energetic voice-over artist.
Immediately identified as owner of the moral high ground, he loses his job
when he insists (against the producer's will) that his cigarette-puffing
cartoon bird refer to imminent lung cancer. 

     When Daniel's decorator wife Miranda (her prissy name gives her away)
decides that she can no longer put up with his lack of discipline, she
gets custody of the three kids. Miranda exemplifies the movie's strategy
to incorporate any potential complaints against its politics: she's
outrageously repressed and whiny, but she also voices the PC lines that
might be raised: "Don't make me out to be the monster," "Why am I the only
one who sees a need for rules?", etc. This is a sophisticated tack,
absorbing potential critiques in order to deflect them (_The Simpsons_ do
it all the time). 

     Desperate to be near his kids, Daniel assumes a Scottish brogue, a
gray Mrs. Bates-ian wig, and a large prosthetic bodysuit. By now the plot
makes no sense whatsoever (neither the wife of 14 years nor the children
can see through the disguise), so that Mrs. Doubtfire fast becomes a
family fixture, the perfect wife for picky Miranda. Mrs. D makes the kids
do homework, orders catered nouvelle cuisine (which passes as her own
work), and dances with the vacuum cleaner in the requisite housecleaning
montage sequence. She also drops strong hints that Miranda's old flame
(Pierce Brosnan) is a cad; the jealousy business might have been funnier
if Brosnan weren't such an obvious, overtanned fop (on his way to becoming
Bond, but of course). 

     There are many troubling issues raised by this scenario. Williams'
woman-self is enormously dowdy (no threat of homoerotics here, except in
the form of an elderly bus driver who soon enough gets properly dissed).
That he first tries on a heavily mascaraed Latina look, and a Barbra-style
brassy-ness makes it clear that a sexualized female persona is only
allowable as a brief, very campy allusion. 

     Similarly, Harvey Fierstein's appearance (as Daniel's gay, theatrical
dresser brother, complete with live-in partner) deflects charges of
homophobia, suggesting instead that the movie is liberal-minded. Sure, the
siblings' bonding activities involve non-threatening gestures like "high
fives," but at least they're pals and gayness is visible. (Daniel also
takes part in some ritual guy-stuff with potential employer Robert Prosky:
they down double Scotches and make grunting noises as they discuss
Daniel's new career as a children's show host.)

     It's hardly surprising that Daniel is found out (during a painfully
drawn-out farce sequence, as he scuttles between two tables and the
women's room in a posh restaurant). But when the judge argues that Daniel
is then unfit for joint custody precisely because he's been wearing
dresses, the film's unthought-out conservative line emerges. Referred to
as "deviant" and "perverse," Daniel is - by virtue of his crossdressing -
lumped in with the rest of those sinister characters who like to hold
young children in their laps. 

     Such outright phobia (voiced by the imperious judge but unchallenged
by anyone else in the film - by now Fierstein is nowhere in sight) _is_ a
bit dismaying, since the film does go to some lengths to suggest that
alternative family structures are not only all right, but occasionally
necessary and good. But the film is clearly invested in straight-only
family models, suggested by a litany of possibilities recited by the
ultra-motherly Mrs. D, a list which doesn't include "two fathers," for
example. 

     I suppose this is too much to ask of a mainstream movie in 1993. It
achieves its only substantive alternative in the fiction of Mrs. D, who
becomes "real" enough that everyone refers to her as if she's a separate
person from Daniel, even after the ruse is disclosed. The impossibility of
imagining them in the same body might be taken up by the next
(inevitable?) version of this plot, but let's not count on it. 


Cynthia Fuchs teaches film/media studies and is coordinator of the queer
studies project at George Mason University.

Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs.  All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author.

This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.