‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ now on Broadway, follows a safe formula

One sure sign that Broadway is bouncing back is the arrival of new shows based on hit movies. The latest is “Mrs. Doubtfire” — a sweetly clumsy valentine to broken families from the mid-1990s that arrives in the fraught 2020s.

What opened Sunday at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre is the musical equivalent of a softball down the middle: a safe, respectfully updated adaptation of a familiar plot with a great leading man, a few moments of lunacy and pro forma songs that disappear from memory like one of the many quick changes.

The supremely talented Rob McClure steps into the title role that the late Robin