Someone’s Found Two Deleted Scenes From ‘Mrs Doubtfire’, And You’ll Really Wish They Hadn’t

As any child of divorce will tell you, Mrs Doubtfire is ultimately not a happy move. For each infectious scene of Robin Williams dancing with a broom or smashing a pie into his face, there’s another of him on the verge of tears begrudgingly coping with the end of his marriage, his limited job prospects and the loss of his kids. After Williams’ widely-mourned death in 2014, this work was declared the “happy-sad performance of his career”.

“[It’s] a masterpiece comic turn in which his linguistic voltage, his madcap mimetic gift, his soulfulness, and his eerie, emptied-out humility are perfectly rationed and combined,” wrote James Parker in a loving eulogy for The Atlantic.

Now someone has gone and blown that all to hell. This week US journalist Matthew Keys has unearthed two scenes deleted from the end of the film, at least one of which would have taken place after the reveal that Daniel Hillard (Williams) was Mrs Doubtfire. With an unflinching focus on the children’s faces, we hear the intense (yet totally fair) fallout from his deceitful actions and how little it’s actually helped their overall predicament. In the other sequence, their eldest daughter Lydia also suffers a public humiliation at a spelling bee, because ha, why not? Our hearts have been pulverised at this point anyway.

If you’d like to relieve that tightening in your chest, here’s the right and true ending. It subs out much of the unrelenting misery for a bit of bittersweet hope and is thus a much better way to start your day.

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h/t Pedestrian.