| Plot Synopsis Mike Nichols' hilarious reworking of the classic French farce La Cage aux Folles is a treat, spiced up with additional moments of contemporary political satire. Nathan Lane and Robin Williams are marvelous as two gay lovers who run a South Beach nightclub featuring Lane's female impersonations. Williams has a grown son from a previous marriage, who is engaged to the daughter of a stodgy right-wing politician (Gene Hackman). When it comes time for the two families to meet, the fur flies in an uproariously funny dinner scene which is the film's highlight. Also featuring a wonderful turn by Hank Azaria as Williams' flamboyant chef, whose attempts at "butching it up" for the dinner go scandalously awry, The Birdcage is a delightfully engaging comedy. Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide Reviews DEREK ARMSTRONG All Movie Guide High Production Values Mike Nichols' The Birdcage is a funny, slapstick, but ultimately slight farce, notable as a forerunner in the movement to make gay characters mainstream and profitable at the box office. It succeeded bigtime, winning a broad audience and raking in close to $125 million. It's rare that another actor gets to upstage Robin Williams, but Nathan Lane does so wonderfully, playing an ungracefully aging drag queen who performs at the Miami nightclub owned by Williams, his subdued life partner. It's the role that catapulted Lane into the American popular consciousness, if also typecasting him in the process. His swishy hysterics never get tiresome, but it's even funnier watching him try to learn machismo from Williams, who can "pass" for heterosexual. Williams' treacly scenes connecting with his son are the weakest parts of the movie, which hits a more comfortable stride during its brilliantly staged, elaborate cover-ups aimed at hoodwinking Gene Hackman's right-wing politician. Almost as funny as Lane, in a supporting role, is the scantily clad Hank Azaria, as the couple's flamboyant housekeeper who loves dancing to Gloria Estefan. The Birdcage is also notable for a pre-Ally McBeal appearance by Calista Flockhart, who plays the son's fianc�e. ROGER EBERT March 8, 1996 Hollywood has had a little cottage industry in recent years, turning out American retreads of French films. Now comes the remake of the most seductive target, the comedy "La Cage aux Folles" (1978), which is about a gay man whose son wants him to play it straight for a few days. All of this will be familiar if you've seen the original, or the two sequels, or the Broadway version. "The Birdcage" isn't about plot, anyway. It's about character, and about the twisted logic of screwball comedy, in which everybody acts the craziest just when they're trying to make the most sense. What makes Mike Nichols' version more than just a retread is good casting in the key roles, and a wicked screenplay by Elaine May, who keeps the original story but adds little zingers here and there ("Live on Fisher Island and get buried in Palm Beach - that way you'll get the best of Florida!"). The movie stars Robin Williams as Armand Goldman, the owner-operator of a drag revue on South Beach. He lives upstairs over his nightclub with Albert (Nathan Lane), the star of the show, who has been his lover for some 20 years. Albert is a basket case, threatened by encroaching age and insecurity. He functions only because Agador (Hank Azaria), the flamboyant houseboy, tranquilizes him with Pirin tablets. ("They're just aspirin with the `as' scraped off," Agador confides to Armand.) A crisis. Armand's son Val (Dan Futterman) has become engaged (to a girl, I should add), and wants to bring her home to meet his dad, but not "Auntie Albert." The complication is that his fiancee's father is a conservative senator (Gene Hackman), who leads the Coalition for Moral Order and thinks the pope is too controversial and Billy Graham too liberal. Albert is devastated that the boy he raised like his own son is turning his back on him. Armand is upset, too, but goes along with a masquerade in which Val's mother (Christine Baranski), who had Val after a one-night stand with Armand, will pretend to be Mrs. Goldman. Imagine everything that can go wrong, including the peculiarity of Val having two mothers onstage at the same time, and you more or less have the rest of the movie. Since the material is familiar, what's a little amazing is how fresh it seems at times, in the hands of the American cast. Robin Williams is the best surprise; in a role that seems written as a license for flamboyance, he's more restrained than in anything he's done since "Awakenings" (1990). Nathan Lane, from Broadway's "Guys and Dolls," doesn't have quite the semi-hysterical sincerity that Michel Serrault had in the original, and his impersonation of Val's mother is a little too obvious and over the top, but he works well the rest of the time, especially in his more pensive passages. One problem is that some of his biggest moments (as when he tries to practice walking like John Wayne) are telegraphed from the earlier movie. Most of the biggest laughs, for me, came from Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest, as the senator and his wife. Hackman's senator is weathering a crisis (his closest colleague has just died in bed with an underage prostitute), and thinks maybe meeting his new in-laws will appease his right-wing constituents by promoting family values. Wiest, who sees and understands more than her husband but dotes on him, reads the situation in South Beach more quickly, but goes with the flow. "The Birdcage" is the first time Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who helped define improvisational comedy in the 1950s, have worked together on a movie. What mostly sparkles from their work here is the dialogue, as when the senator's daughter, trying to cast the situation in the best possible light, explains that South Beach is "about two minutes from Fisher Island, where Jed Bush lives." Or when the Williams character surveys the crowd at his nightclub and whispers to the maitre d', "Free coffee for the Kennedys." Awards Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (nom) -Cheryl Carasik, Robert W. Welch III -1996 Academy Best Ensemble Acting (win)- -1996 Screen Actors Guild Best Supporting Actor (nom)-Hank Azaria -1996 Screen Actors Guild Best Supporting Actor (nom)-Nathan Lane -1996 Screen Actors Guild |
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| THE BIRDCAGE 1996 - USA - 119 min. - Feature, Color Director - Mike Nichols |
| Genre / Type - Comedy, Farce, Comedy of Errors, Gay & Lesbian Films Flags - Adult Situations, Adult Humor MPAA Rating - R Keywords - nightclub, conservative, engagement, homosexual, in-law marriage, Senator, spouse secret-identity, family-disapproval Themes - Gender-Bending, Assumed Identities, Family Gatherings Tones - Campy, Bright, Madcap, Light, Irreverent, Silly Moods - Just for Laughs Box office - $124,060,553 Produced by - MGM/United Artists Released by - UIP MPAA Reasons - for language Cast Robin Williams -- Armand Goldman Gene Hackman -- Senator Keeley Nathan Lane -- Albert Goldman / Starina Dianne Wiest -- Louise Keeley Hank Azaria -- Agador Dan Futterman -- Val Goldman Calista Flockhart -- Barbara Keeley Christine Baranski -- Katharine Amy Powell -- TV Reporter Tony Snow -- TV Host Mary Major -- TV Reporter John Pontrelli -- Waiter In Cafe Trina McGee-Davis -- Black Girl On TV Andres Fuentes -- Goldman Girls |
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