I’d have to disagree with the assessment on the Sally Field’s character. The movie showed Robin Williams’ character wasn’t the most responsible adult around, and was too busy being ‘fun dad’ to be a true partner to his wife. I felt we’d simply seen a woman who’d been pushed to this limit by her husband’s antics and snapped. (Note the wild party/completely trashed house we were introduced to right at the beginning–and it’s implied such things were typical of Williams’ character.)
The other guy also didn’t come along until after the divorce was final, so she didn’t exactly throw her husband aside for ‘someone better’.
In a conversation she has with “Mrs. Doubtfire” (her disguised ex-husband), she admits that she was stressed, she was tired, they were always fighting, and she was so miserable that she was crying herself to sleep–and her ex-husband never even noticed.
And note that throughout the movie, we do see the ex-husband suddenly pulling himself together and being more responsible. Maybe if he’d done that earlier, he wouldn’t have pushed his wife to a point where she felt she had no more options.
And apparently there was talk of having the divorced couple get back together, but Fields, Williams, and the director (all divorcees themselves) felt it would be sending a ‘false message’ to kids about the reality of divorce–so the characters’ divorce remained.
