So let me take you back to 1993, back to Chris Columbus’ 1993’s-second-highest-grossing film; the comedy-drama, “Mrs. Doubtfire”. This Hilarious, heart-warming, and funny family movie was so good that it grossed 17 times its cost.
The first time I saw “Mrs. Doubtfire”, I fell in love with it and watched it a couple more times. The first part of this heartwarming movie made me sad. It just started and then wham! A divorce in our faces!
Anyway, the movie is about a father’s love for his kids and the lengths he’d go to just to spend time with them. 25 years later, this family movie is still a must-watch, especially during the holidays, when you’re just looking for an uplifting but funny movie.
See also: Why K-dramas are still family friendly in 2020
A Funny Movie with a Heart-warming Theme
You can skip the next part if you’ve seen “Mrs Doubtfire”; that’s the part where I rumble about the plot, just a not-so-quick summary of the funny and heart-warming script.
Okay, so this is the plot: Daniel Hillard, a father of three (Lydia, Chris, Natalie), quits his low-paying job and later home to throw a wild birthday party for Chris. Miranda, Dan's wife, is not impressed. She's had enough! The ‘I can’t do this anymore’ stage has been reached and Dan is done for. She decides to divorce him.
To Miranda, Daniel is undependable, so she files for divorce and custody of the couple’s three kids. She’s given sole custody and Daniel is told to secure a steady job and suitable residence if he is to get shared custody of the kids.
Daniel tries to get his act together and gets a job as a shipping clerk at a TV station. After learning that Miranda is seeking a housekeeper, Dan applies for the job as an older, Scottish lady called “Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire”. He also antagonizes Miranda’s efforts to secure another candidate other than Mrs. Doubtfire by blocking off any communication between his ex-wife and any aspiring nanny. He gets the job, and then asks his brother, a makeup artist, for an extreme makeover, which includes a prosthetic mask and a costume.
To cut an endless story short, Mrs. Doubtfire wins over the kids, Miranda, and helps Miranda reconnect with her kids. Daniel/Mrs. Doubtfire also lands a bigger job at the TV station, a hit children’s show. He is then discovered first by the kids, and then by an infuriated Miranda. When they attend another custody hearing, his artifice leads to him being stripped of more visitation rights.
In the end, Miranda and the kids realize how important Mrs. Doubtfire is. Daniel is reunited with his kids as he and Miranda agree on shared custody.
The End.
And it ends? Just like that? “Or maybe there’s a sequel in the making” … 1993, 94, 95, —, 2014. Williams dies. I was gutted!
In a certain cold, lonely corner of my heart, I had—ante mortem—hoped that Mrs. Doubtfire 2 was going to happen. Somehow. When Robbie died, my heart sank, knowing that I’d not enjoy the sequel of this family movie if they decided to make it; it’d surely not be heart-warming but heart-breaking.
Just a Funny Movie?
Minus some ‘cussing’, Mrs. Doubtfire’s funny lines were blended with lessons. It taught me that love binds and is all that matters for a family to be a family, relationships work when people realize that they are different, and try to work on the said differences while acknowledging that it’s fine to be different; it also provides a couple parenting of hints, one of which was that all your kids want is to be understood.
No Mrs. Doubtfire 2? Not Funny!
Now back to the reason for a non-existent sequel to such an uplifting film. Do you know that some people actually made “Basic Instinct 2”, and deservedly grossed a meager 6 million, wow? So why did Columbus and Co. fail to make a sequel to a must-watch film that cost 25 million but grossed 441.3 million? All those profits!
Actually, Mrs. Doubtfire 2 failed because the scriptwriters couldn’t come up with a good script. See, the movie was based on a novel by Anne Fine, Alias Madame Doubtfire. When they were writing the script for Mrs. Doubtfire 2, Anne Fine had not written a sequel to Alias Madame Doubtfire and that caused some problems with the movie’s script. I presume Williams wanted the movie to still carry the heart-warming tag. It’s said that the script might have switched to a high school setting, or something like that.
Read: The Money Heist is overrated.
The script was written and rewritten three times, but the film’s lead, Williams, wasn’t convinced that it was the right script.
In 2014, they hired another screenwriter, David Berenbaum, and 20th Century Fox was ready to make Mrs. Doubtfire 2. Columbus and Williams were scheduled to return to the studio for another Hilarious, heart-warming, funny family movie. But life had also scheduled something for Williams — He died 3 months after the announcement of the sequel.
To Robin,
I’m thankful to you for sharing, with us, your God-given talent, through all those heart-warming movies.
Thanks and Adios, Mrs. Doubtfire!
Contact me or hire me on Fiverr
Comments
Post a Comment