How others will see it. Aimed at an older and liberal audience, Victor/Victoria gamely cedes all key Hollywood demographics. Some will consider the movie funny; such folks are likely to be forgiving, or believe that homosexuals are fluttery and funny.
How I felt about it. Of course, some homosexuals in fact are, but if your gay stereotype is Liberace, you will see his reflection in Robert Preston. Andrews is no longer a hottie by 1982, but she is attractive by middle-aged standards, and she has a fair voice, although as a singer she lacks both soul and irony.
Two hours of "aren't gay people funny" is too full hours too many, and Victor's stage act (she's either a woman or a castrato) is unconvincing. If she's the toast of Paris, they were really in need of good nightclub performers after Toulouse-Lautrec hung us his set of colored pencils.
Victor/Victoria is the sort of movie where people break and enter hotel rooms to spy on one another, and never get caught. It's the sort of movie where if you run into an obnoxious stranger, he turns out to be a gay middleweight champion. It's the sort of movie where Julie Andrews is so famished she faints twice in the opening scenes, but still manages to sing well enough to shatter glasses (nobody can really do that, right?). She also beats up Preston's threatening boyfriend. Sure. I'm really laughing now.
Yes, and Victor/Victoria is the sort of movie where the gangster isn't really a gangster, but a really nice guy, and his bodyguard Alex Karras isn't a tough, but a big puppy dog homosexual. But Garner's girlfriend, Lesley Ann Warren, is a complete moll stereotype, down to the grating high pitched voice, incredible stupidity, exaggerated vulgar slang, and strident demands. The mold should have been broken after Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain; there's nowhere to go for such a character but downhill.
We'll forgive Bullets Over Broadway because the bimbo gets bumped off. In Victor/Victoria, she is merely (thankfully) written off, but she later makes an unwelcome return, still with an IQ below room temperature.
But, naturally, it all comes to a happy ending for all significant characters, since this is a comedy (or tries to be) and that's how things are supposed to be. Girl gets guy, guy gets guy, and Garner's masculinity remains unchallenged. Preston gets to prove that the more burly the female impersonator, the more funny it is supposed to be.
If you're looking for insight into gender roles and sexuality, try again. Gay pratfall comedy? You've come to the right place.