It's one of THOSE films....

I've seen films like this several times, where they keep pushing it as a family/kid-friendly movie, when it actually isn't by any stretch of the imagination. Just because the story involves a family, is funny, and has Robin Williams in it, does not mean it's really geared towards the demographic they were advertising.

Case in point: within the first 10 minutes of "Mrs. Doubtfire," there is a TON of cussing; not something you want your kids hearing first thing in a family movie. Even worse, some of the kids in the movie start cussing, and children watching think it's okay for them to do it because the child on the screen is doing that.

This film also covers a number of uncomfortable subjects for kids, particularly if the young viewers themselves experienced what the kids did, or if there are dads out there that had something similar happen to them that Robin Williams' character had to deal with.

-A messy divorce where the dad gets almost nothing and the mom gets everything, including the kids --> dad just gets to have them visit for a few hours in his crappy apt.

(To be fair, the dad was very immature, like an extra child for the mother to have to take care of, had an unstable job situation as a voice actor, and apparently liked to spend his wife's money).

Cross-dressing --- now before you scream at me and call me transphobic, I'd like to point out that a.) I did understand that the dad was not a transvestite or a transsexual, and he never showed any traits that showed he was anything but a "cis" straight white dude. b.) He just wanted to spend more time with his kids, and had to pretend to be a demographic his wife would never suspect and would happily let him into the house. But the thing was, they had a lot of awkward situations that the dad had to deal with out of sight of his family, and jokes that aren't really suited for kids, and would force parents watching with the kids to have to make some serious explaining.

Unlike-able ex-wife - while I can understand where the mom was coming from, dumping her immature, irresponsible husband, thinking it was the best for both of them and their kids, she still is not the most sympathetic character in the movie, and keeps acting as if she's always in the right and her husband is in the wrong. If anything, this movie almost paints her as a villain in this situation, despite the fact that she was in a situation a lot of divorced mothers ended up in. In some ways, I'm glad they didn't get back together. The only nice thing she did was allow the dad to be himself and take care of the kids when she couldn't.

There are other problems I had with this movie, and it irritated the living daylights out of me when I knew kids in school who kept wanting to watch it during homeroom over and over again, when it wasn't that great of a movie.

Oddly enough, there was another movie with this trait that Robin Williams starred in called "Jack," that was a film that SEEMED like it was geared towards families, but really wasn't.