Chris Columbus can make family comedy funny without dismissing the hurt behind it. We like his patience with actors, but wish he were less determined to make everybody feel better.
Fi1m perspective
The fussiness of Robin Williams’s nanny in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) matters as much as the comic voice. Chris Columbus lets the invented woman have firm opinions about how people ought to behave, and leaves room for the father’s unhappiness beneath the impersonation. We were moved by those quieter indications of Daniel Hillard’s distress, because Williams makes the separation matter even during the farce. Sally Field gives that separation weight too. This is Columbus doing something worthwhile: allowing a broad family comedy to take its characters’ troubles seriously.
Screenplays for Gremlins (1984) and The Goonies (1985) came before his directing debut, Adventures in Babysitting (1987). His breakthrough, Home Alone (1990), established the mix of slapstick and family feeling that Mrs. Doubtfire continued. His ability to get convincing reactions from children also suited Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). The first established the series’ visual style and tone.
His patience with performers does not always help the finished film. Columbus gave Williams extensive room to improvise on Mrs. Doubtfire, and he understands that the actor need not work at full volume throughout. Yet the film keeps insisting that everybody should feel better, and at 125 minutes it needs a firmer cut. The performances are worth an evening, but the sentiment would be more persuasive if there were less of it.
In The Thursday Murder Club (2025), the determination to keep things pleasant becomes a serious problem. Mirren, Brosnan, Kingsley and Imrie make agreeable company, but Columbus gives their murder investigation too little urgency. Don Burgess’s late-afternoon lighting and James Merifield’s warm stone interiors make the retirement village look comfortable and untroubled. Thomas Newman’s skipping score tells us to enjoy ourselves before the jokes have earned it, while Dan Zimmerman ends scenes before unease can develop.
He does not need to become a harsher director. Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire show that he can build a comic set piece and judge how long to hold it, something the armchair conversations in The Thursday Murder Club lack. Start with Mrs. Doubtfire, allowing for the extra sentiment and a running time its performances do not quite justify.
Biography
Chris Columbus is an American filmmaker. Born Christopher Joseph Columbus on 10 September 1958 in Spangler, Pennsylvania, he studied film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He began his career writing screenplays for Gremlins (1984) and The Goonies (1985), then made his directorial debut with Adventures in Babysitting (1987).
Columbus achieved commercial success directing Home Alone (1990), its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). He later directed the first two Harry Potter films, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). He co-founded the production company 1492 Pictures in 1995.
More recent credits include directing Pixels (2015) and, as director and producer, The Thursday Murder Club (2025). He also produced Nosferatu (2024) through his company Maiden Voyage, founded with his daughter Eleanor Columbus.
