10 Ridiculous Movie Premises Everybody Fell For
9. Daniel Can Fool His Whole Family - Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
The plot of Mrs. Doubtfire is that Robin Williams character Daniel is a horribly unreliable husband and family man who loses custody of his children in the separation. Unable to see them as often as he'd like, and knowing that his soon-to-be ex-wife Miranda is advertising for a housekeeper, he pretends to be one: a middle-aged woman by the name of Euphegenia Doubtfire, fooling the three kids and their mother.
Let's pretend for a moment that the makeup is so pitch perfect that it renders Daniel's bad impression of a woman seamless (it's not. That prosthetic covering Daniels face looks and moves like a large and inventive skin graft, not a real face). If we suspend our disbelief and take it as real that Daniel is convincingly made up to be Mrs. Doubtfire, can we suspend our disbelief that no one who knows him can see through the disguise? Absolutely not, it's ridiculous.
The two oldest kids only twig that Mrs. Doubtfire is their father when he lets slip his real voice after they catch him peeing standing up, Daniel's voice apparently being so distinctive that it cuts through the dissonance immediately. The youngest girl has no idea it's him: more alarmingly, Miranda spends a good deal of quality time with her husband of fourteen years dressed as a buxom Scottish widow, and has no idea it's him, even when he lets his real voice slip in a little.
They all know that Daniel is an actor who does voice work, and they've probably heard his silly impressions and little characters their whole lives: he's that kind of guy. The kids might just fall for it, maybe his wife? No ones that credulous, or self-absorbed, that they couldn't see the man they married through an inch of putty and a bad Scots burr. Oh, and Miranda was right to dump him and the judge is right to award her custody.
These are not the actions of a mature or even a stable man, and supervised visitation and court-mandated therapy is the least of what he needs