Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

  This week in Movie Club was Mrs. Doubtfire, a 90s comedy that has not aged all that well.  Content warning:  transphobia

Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) is an out-of-work voice actor who is suddenly, from a clear blue sky, confronted with a divorce by his wife, Miranda (Sally Field), after 14 years of constant complaint.  Due to his current state of job- and homelessness, Miranda is awarded full custody with an option for Daniel to be re-evaluated after 90 days.  Daniel decides that is too much injustice and instead has his makeup/VFX artist brother, Frank (Harvey Fierstein), make him a full-face latex mask and bodysuit, transforming Daniel into Euphegenia Doubtfire, English nanny.  Thus equipped, he infiltrates his ex-wife's house in order to still be around his unwitting children.  

If, like me, you grew up in the 90s watching this on repeat, you will still have fond nostalgia attached to it but that does not exculpate the film from being dangerously insane.  In much the same way as Fifty Shades of Grey being one billionaire away from a Criminal Minds episode, Robin Willians' charisma is all that saves Mrs. Doubtfire from being a Dateline special.  But it is Robin Williams and therefore no one is clamoring for Daniel Hillard to do jail time for the litany of crimes he commits in this film, including attempted murder.

God, the 90s were so weird about women.  This film was based on a novel written by a woman with two female scriptwriters and it's still horribly misogynistic.  Every woman in this is either a shrew or eye candy with no lines.  There's a heart buried in there and a fairly decent message of "Sometimes it just doesn't work out and it's nobody's fault" but you really have to dig.  

To its credit, the film does normalize Frank's relationship with his partner and none of the characters bats an eye over two gay (if heavily stereotyped) men in a committed family.  Which makes Chris's (Matt Lawrence) reaction to finding out his dad is cross-dressing as the housekeeper make no sense.  If you already know Uncle Frank and Aunt Jack do drag, why are you being weird about touching your dad's hand in drag?  (It comes right after a scene where Daniel uses the bathroom and doesn't wash his hands but that's not given as the reason for Chris's reluctance.)  I understand confusion, alarm even, but not the weird transphobia.

Anyway, your mileage on this will vary but it is currently streaming on Disney+.