Mrs Doubtfire was incredibly popular when it was released, and for many good reasons. But recently it seem to have become the trendy thing to say (at best) that it hasn’t aged well, or (at worst) that it’s a reprehensible, homophobic, dangerous piece of cinema.

I think aside from a few wrinkles it’s held up remarkably well, and people aren’t giving it the due it’s deserved. Here are a few of the reasons I still like it:

Stuart is actually a really nice guy. He loves the kids, respects Miranda and while his opinion of Daniel is coloured by what Miranda has said about him, he takes care not to bad-mouth him in front of the kids. In fact, the only time we hear him say something negative about Daniel is when he’s talking to a friend at the resort and doesn’t realise who Mrs Doubtfire is. In that same sentence he also talks about how “crazy” he is about Daniel’s kids, so we can assume that’s genuine as he’d have no reason to lie in that situation. Even during the reveal at the restaurant and he discovers the truth he’s cordial in public. What happened after this scene is not known to us.

Miranda is not the bad guy. In the original book “Madame Doubtfire” she explicitly is. She has no time for her kids or her husband, and is so wrapped up in her own life she fails to notice that the new nanny looks just like her ex-husband. In the book the kids aren’t fooled (the disguise is TERRIBLE), but Miranda is. The film was right in making her far more sympathetic as it allows for a more nuanced story where there are clearly faults on both sides. Miranda is too career driven and doesn’t have time for her family. Daniel refuses to set boundaries which isn’t healthy for children and is so impulsive he can’t even hold down a steady job which again isn’t a good example to set. The problem isn’t that one of them is bad, it’s that neither of them will compromise their ideology in order to create a stable family life for their children. Neither attitude would be good for the kids to learn from. It’s not great in a relationship if both people are identical, but neither is it great if the parents are polar opposites with no common ground. How are the kids supposed to be raised in an environment where both parents are always behaving in totally different ways and they don’t know what they should be doing?

Yes, bringing the farm to their house was a mistake. Yes, it was an overreaction of Miranda to leave Daniel over it. But as she confessed to Mrs Doubtfire later on, it wasn’t just that…but that event was the latest in a very long list of issues that we never got to see.

The only healthy relationship we see in the film is between a gay couple, played by two openly gay actors, in San Francisco. Whilst Daniel is lying to his family and working out an increasingly contrived plan to see his kids, Frank and Jack are happy, have nothing to hide, and apparently have a positive relationship with Daniel’s kids. Sure, being in San Francisco probably helped, but it’s still nice to see a 90s movie with an openly gay couple who have a valid, positive rapport with a straight couple AND their children who don’t see anything wrong with it. Though…I will concede Daniel referring to them as “Uncle Frank and Aunt Jack” is a bit odd, though for all we know that is how Jack CHOOSES to refer to himself.

When I was a kid I didn’t understand why the judge was so harsh on Daniel at the end of the film, forbidding him to see his kids without supervision. Internet commentators nowadays are quick to point out that the film is using the “Depraved Homosexual” trope, insinuating that he can’t be trusted around his own kids because of the whole cross-dressing thing. But I think there’s more to it than that. Just because a CHARACTER has an opinion doesn’t mean the screenwriters do. Look at things from the judge’s point of view. Daniel broke the terms of the divorce settlement, which is a BIG strike against him. But he also lied to his ex-wife constantly for weeks and months, concocting a scheme to get closer to his kids without her knowing about it. I don’t know if the judge knew that the kids knew who he was, but it certainly wouldn’t help his case. It’s a good thing that Frank and Jack didn’t get implicated, but I don’t think there was any point at which they’re told what Daniel is using the costume FOR. Perhaps they were just glad of the business and happy to help out a family member? Maybe they thought it was just one of Daniel’s elaborate flights of fancy. But I digress. I think the reason the judge was so harsh (besides breaking the divorce settlement) was the sheer fact that Daniel’s actions were pre-meditated and carried out over a long period of time. This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing done by somebody desperate to see his kids. This was planned, refined and extremely detailed. As the audience must surely realise (though it’s glossed over in the scene as they seem to want you to sympathise with Daniel) these are not the actions of a normal man. Not even a divorcee who wants to spend more time with his kids. Perhaps if Daniel had just done what the judge said – found a home, kept it clean and tidy, got a job and kept to the terms of the agreement, then he might have been allowed to see them more often. But rather than negotiate with Miranda or the court, or just do what he was told (It was only three months and he still got to see them), for some reason he thought this was a better solution. This doesn’t make him a bad person, but it does give the judge a reason to be extremely wary of him.

There is nothing sexual about Daniel’s plan to become Mrs Doubtfire. It’s purely a means to an end. Anybody who interprets it as such is simply reading things into it that aren’t there.

I will concede that there is a rather transphobic “joke” during the audition montage, where Daniel pretends to be various unhinged candidates, which has the punchline “I don’t work with the males because I used to be one”. Par for the course for the 90s though of course that doesn’t excuse it. Still, it might not have even been in the script – it could have been one of the many various improv riffs that Williams was notorious for doing during filming. That doesn’t forgive him but I don’t think it had any malicious intent behind it.

I greatly respect the ending. Apparently the original plan was for Daniel and Miranda to get back together, but both Robin Williams and Sally Field (being divorcees) pushed back on that, saying it was unrealistic and would give children of divorced parents false hope. Perhaps the lesson to take away is in the monologue from Daniel near the end – “Just because they don’t love each other anymore, doesn’t mean that they don’t love you.” That’s a very important moral, and I appreciate the fact they chose to give it a bittersweet ending rather than everything going back to normal. It also nice of the studio to give the old presenter a role as the mailman rather than just firing him.

Harvey Fierstein is a living legend and doesn’t get nearly enough respect. Go and listen to “This Is Not Going to Be Pretty”. You’ll be entertained and moved.