Cinema
Mrs Doubtfire (12, Selected cinemas)
Lipstick and pantyhose
Mark Steyn
a recent Eddie Murphy movie (I for- get which, but it's easily done), the hero and his pals sit around speculating on an 'escort agency' called 'Chicks With Dicks'. Fair enough. According to one startling survey, 40 per cent of America's women prostitutes are transvestites or pre-op transsexuals. Indeed, the tired businessman crossing Times Square after a Broadway show would be hard put to find a hooker who isn't packing a rod. Even the star of America's most celebrated home video, Rodney King, has, on one of his post-beat- ing encounters with the California cops, been stopped in his car with a TV tart. Maybe, in the light of Lorena Bobbitt, the beleagured male member feels there's safe- ty in numbers, but, for whatever reason, the first thing many American men look for in a gal is a penis. Personally, I'd say that's why The Crying Game was a hit.
Yet, despite these trends and statistics, Hollywood still makes a tremendous bally- hoo every time a leading man decides to put on a dress. After Tootsie, Dustin Hoff- man's skirts cast such long shadows that it's taken a decade for even Robin Williams to tiptoe cautiously into the powder room. For his trouble, happily, he's in line for a zillion awards and has already won a Gold- en Globe, to go with the two he's already got shoved up his apron. Dustin took his homely little spinster very seriously spending months studying how women walk, locating their centre of gravity, exper- imenting with different dipilatory devices, actually living as a woman for four years
(two of them at the White House as Nancy Reagan); he had to be forcibly restrained from having the full operation. Robin, on the other hand, leaves it all to latex, can't even be bothered shaving his legs and pro- duces a huge pantomime caricature.
The unshaven legs characterise Chris Columbus' sloppy and ill-structured film. Mrs Doubtfire starts with a brilliant premise that's simultaneously screwy, touching and topical: the only way Sally Fields' ex-hus- band can see his kids is to smuggle himself into his ex-wife's house as the nanny. It's such a nifty idea that you assume it can't fail: like Sleepless In Seattle, you can pick holes and grumble and gripe but the cen- tral gimmick steamrollers everything in its path regardless. But Mrs Doubtfire turns out instead to be a running joke that barely gets on its feet.
For starters, compare the star (and pro- ducer) Robin Williams with Hoffman or Curtis and Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. These are guys who've worn sober suits and acted quietly; suddenly, they're wearing lip- stick and pantyhose: well, golly, we've never seen that before. But, with Williams, Where's the novelty? Funny turns is what he does, and all he does: manic rock jocks in Good Morning, Vietnam, motormouth cartoon genies in Aladdin; even Mrs Doubtfire winds up hosting a TV kids' show. These aren't people, these are acts.
Still, it's an engaging act: Mrs Doubtfire plays soccer, vacuums to Aerosmith, talks dirty to his ex-wife's new beau. It's when the latex comes off and he's playing the rejected husband that you realise this is a film where no-one's wearing the pants. Self-pity never films attractively, and Williams' downturned mouth, whimpering voice, sad eyes and pleading brows are gruesomely overdone. Possibly, he was Intending to play Lassie in the one where she's stuck down a coalmine and has to tell her master to go ahead and leave her to die, but discovered he'd left his dog cos- tume at home.
The extremes of Williams' twin roles the agonised new man and the balloon- bosomed nanny — neatly encompass the broader seesawing of his career. Marriage (to his own former nanny, now his co-pro- ducer) and children have brought out a twee sentimentality. Well, so what, man? Just relax and enjoy it, like Bill Cosby. Instead, aware that he's disappointing his old stand-up fans, he over-compensates With ever more noisy, overblown distrac- tions. Like the wig and boobs, Williams' comedy is now all on the surface.
In another contrast with Hoffman, Williams deploys a Scottish accent but seems to think his character comes from England. I wouldn't mention it, being bare- ly able myself to distinguish the constituent parts of this small unitary state. But, from a character who preaches at several points the virtues of learning through entertain- ment, I found it symptomatic of the movie's laziness and humbug.
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