Saddened
I recently watched Mrs. Doubtfire again. I wanted to watch Swan Princess but that turned out to be a Sony Pictures animation rather than a Disney one, so it was not on Disney+. I will hardly name any spoilers here, rather something I came to realize as the end of the movie was coming near.
My dad most likely watched this movie when it came out in 1993 or at least shortly thereafter. My parents got divorced in 1995 and I am positive he remembered the movie at that point. One of the first movies I watched with him alone in the new house that he occupied where I spent every other weekend and at the time my stepmom was not in the picture yet. I am not sure where my sister was but I had the moment alone with him. At the time I just viewed the movie and saw a dad wanting to be with his children and mostly a funny Robin Williams in a bodysuit pretending to be an old woman that resulted in hilarity.
Now coming back to it, having become a father myself and looking back to what the intentions were of my father with the movie was to say to me the message of the movie applied to our situation as well. I love the fact he used the movie to try and convey this to me. I will definitely try and re-watch other movies of that era and see if there is not a better meaning to it. It made me so sad not realizing for so long that my dad felt this way. I fell asleep sad and I woke up sad. Also because one of the stories he told me was the first time he came back to the Netherlands after being on a mission for the Royal Netherlands Air Force was that he spent about 15-30 minutes behind the fence door at my grandparents house stressing on whether or not we still wanted to see him. When he told me this I told him that I was so happy to just see him because I was afraid I would never see him again.
The message of the movie is that there might not be a happy reunion after a divorce, but it is never the fault of the children and they might or might not end up together, you still can remain a family. A family is determined by the heart of it and not just the physical presence of the entities in question.
I think something most people that are members of online or digital only communities can attest to.