Stu - was he a bad guy?

At first watch, I wondered that too. He came off as a bit pompous & judgmental but not the ghoul that Daniel made him out to be for sure.

While some of his comments at the pool were nasty & uncalled for, such as telling people the kids needed a 'stable father figure' (Daniel WAS stable by then, and he'd always loved them deeply), he seemed like an OK guy to me.

The film didn't villainize him enough, Daniel just comes off as looking like the ass by his actions. I also didn't think his putting pepper in this man's food was funny at ALL. Stu had said he was allergic to pepper, not that he hated pepper. He could been killed!
I lost most of my sympathy for Daniel about 3/4 of the way through the film. He was such a child.


"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."

The movie was about Daniel wanting access to see his children, not about him getting Miranda back.

At the pool scene when Stu is talking to his friend, I assumed he would start trash talking about the kids and saying he only wanted Miranda for one thing, which would then lead to Daniel trying to expose him as a fraud.
However, this wasn't the case and the plot seemed to focus on Daniel's efforts to see more of his children, as well as his jealousy of Stu taking his place within the family.
To sum up, Stu was a genuinely nice guy, and exactly what Miranda was looking for in a partner, it was just Daniel's resentment of the closeness to his family.

stu wasnt a bad guy until he called daniel a loser. he had no right, he didnt even know him so he should never had said that.
typical thing an ass says when their new partner has come out of a relationship. girls do it all the time cos they r t**ts.

ive had girls call me mean and say i treated my ex badly even though he cheated twice, lied etc and they only just met him and ive known him 10yrs. gets on my nerves, they think they know them better than u and start giving u mouth about ur ex when they dont even know the story, they just listen to the guys lies and tell the ex that they are a bitch for treating their new guy mean.

twats.

I think he was supposed to be a good guy. The only negative thing he really did was call Daniel a loser. But he probably got that from Miranda, who seemed perfectly willing to badmouth him to anyone who would listen.

On a side note, I was watching this on AMC and they put up little tidbits about the movie, and one of them said that Stu was originally supposed to be a villian who wanted to send the kids off to boarding school.

Reportin' live for Black TV: White folks are dead, we gettin' the f*@# outta here!

I'm glad they dumped the villain idea from the book to the movie. Even though from the audiences' perspective, we tend to be on Daniel's and the kids' side, we can see that Stu is a pretty good guy. The kids like him and he was making Miranda happy (although I'd question how fast she started seeing him).

The "loser" comment was the only time he was a pr*ck, and even that could've been secondhand stuff he'd heard from Miranda when she was mad.

btw, even though the ending is supposed to be ambiguous, I wonder if Miranda kept up seeing Stu or not? He probably was weirded out finding out Mrs. Doubtfire was Daniel and may have thought he needed to back off for awhile, lol.

Stu was definitely a good guy, but from Daniel's perspective, he was his nemesis. The film makes it clear that Stu loves and respects Miranda, adores her kids and treats them all well. Sure, he called Daniel a "loser" but he was likely repeating what Miranda told him. And the comment wasn't untrue as Daniel lost his wife, his kids, even his house thanks to his immaturity.

Simply put, Daniel was bitter and jealous at how successful Stu was being in Daniel's old role as "dad" and resorted to childish acts to make Stu's life miserable (breaking his Mercedes emblem, throwing the fruit at his head, covering his food in pepper, etc).

You answered the question in your post.

It would be clichéd and boring for him to be a pompous, deceitful womanizer, but as is clear from the scene at the pool bar, he's genuine and good replacement-father material. All of the reasons Daniel hates him are basically petty, jealousy-related reasons; he makes a lot of money, he's dating his ex-wife, he looks like Pierce Brosnan, etc. The only thing he does that can really be considered inconsiderate (excluding when he hits on Miranda at the beginning of the movie--we don't know how much he knew about her relationship status at the time) is call Daniel a loser, which is really hard to fault him for; everyone is at least a little more mean when talking about people who aren't present than when they are, and Stu definitely had the grounds to make that comment. I think the bar scene is a great moment because we're able to empathize with Daniel and understand that Stu is not the sleazy slimeball that Daniel wants to think he is.

I don't think he was a bad guy. But the comments he made about Daniel were out of line. Quite frankly, he didn't know what he was talking about. He was basing his opinion solely upon what Miranda, who was the bitter and spiteful soon-to-be ex-wife of Daniel, was saying about Daniel.