Department of English, University of Louisville Phone: (502)852-6770 or (502)852-6801. Fax: (502)852-4182. I saw MRS DOUBTFIRE this weekend. Though it has some genuinely funny scenes of Robin Williams schtick, by & large it seemed to me a thoroughly reprehensible movie in terms of gender politics--problems in the American family have to do w/ the impatience and lack of sense of humor of the woman who wants a career. The underlying message of such films seems to be that if feminists would just lighten up (and love their children as much as men do) then all would be well. I recognize this is a pretty unsubtle response, and the film does do some things to cover itself against such charges. But it seems to me to come out of a real bitterness, and what I'm wondering is whether the bitterness is general or specific. So I have some questions for screen-listers. 1) I notice in the credits that the movie is based on a novel by a woman. Has anyone read it, and if so what are the differences between the novel and the film? 2) I seem to recollect that after Robin Williams made a big to-do on the talk shows about how wonderful it was to be married and settled and a Dad, he then took up w/ the baby's governess and left the mother. Is this accurate? If so, was there a custody fight? 3) does anyone happen to know anything about anyone else involved in the production that might shed some light? I recall a Molly Haskell piece ("Lights! Camera! Daddy!" I think is the title) that suggests that Avery Korman, who wrote KRAMER vs KRAMER, had been through an ugly divorce, and that the specific misogyny and pity for the father in that film might have been related to that. But the thing about KRAMER, for all the problems Haskell pointed out (mom-bashing, glorification of domestic work when--and because--a man does it), is that it did suggest a real transformation of its male protagonist--a level on which Ted Kramer was forced to "get it," and did. My undergrad film classes still see that very strongly in that film, and it's an interesting one to teach because of its various (and contradictory) relations to feminism. MRS DOUBTFIRE seems to me at once far less substantial, and also significantly meaner-spirited under its comic overlay. I'm wondering, as I say, whether this mean-spiritedness may have a specific biographical reference point. I'm also wondering whether others also saw the film this way. bitnet tbbyer01@ulkyvm; internet [log in to unmask] Thomas B. Byers Department of English/University of Louisville Louisville KY 40292