The Birdcage

Recently I was thinking about what I was going to review for this month, but when I found out that June is Pride Month, I thought I would review certain movies to watch for this month. Let’s get started with the 1996 comedy, “The Birdcage.”

Roger Ebert started his review by saying, “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 strange thinking of screwball comedy, where everybody acts the craziest just when they’re trying to make the most sense.

What makes the late Mike Nichols’ version more than just a rework is good casting in the main roles, and a great screenplay by Elaine May, who keeps the original story but adds little quips 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 the late Robin Williams as Armand Goldman, the owner-operator of a drag show on South Beach. He lives upstairs over his nightclub with Albert, played by Nathan Lane, the tar of the show, who has been in a relationship with him for some 20 years. Albert is a basket case, threatened by trespassing age and insecurity. He works only because Agador, played by Hank Azaria, the colorful houseboy, sedates him with Pirin tablets. (“They’re just aspirin with the ‘as’ scraped off,” Agador reveals to Armand.) A problem. Armand’s son Val, played by Dan Futterman, has become engaged to a girl, and wants to bring her home to meets his dad, but not “Auntie Albert.” The problem is that his fiancée’s father is a conservator senator, played by Gene Hackman, who leads the Coalition for Moral Order and thinks the pope is too controversial and Billy Graham too liberal.

Albert is heartbroken that the boy he raised like his own son is turning against him. Armand is also upset, but goes along with a cover-up where Val’s mother, played by Chrstine 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 uniqueness of Val having two mothers onstage at the same time, and you have the rest of the movie.

Since the material is familiar, what’s a little nice is how fresh it seems at times, with an American cast. Robin Williams is the best surprise. He’s in a role that seems written as a license for splendor, he’s more controlled than in anything he’s done since “Awakenings.” Ebert noted, “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 highlights (like when he tries to practice walking like John Wayne) are shown from the earlier movie.

Ebert admitted, “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.”

Dianne Wiest, who sees and understands more than her husband but spoils him, reads the situation in South Beach quicker, 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 shines from their work here is the dialogue, like when the senator’s daughter, trying to tell the situation in the best possile way, explains that South Beach is “about two minutes from Fisher Island, where Jed Bush lives.” Or when Armand looks at the crowd at his nightclub and whispers to the maître d’, “Free coffee for the Kennedys.”

This is a classic comedy that everyone should see. You will absolutely love this movie, especially with the chemistry from Williams and Lane. Even though Williams wasn’t gay, he really did an amazing and convincing job here. For instance, look at the evolution of dance that he does in about a minute, but ends with saying to keep it all inside. That is one of the funniest moments in here. Check it out and having an enjoyably laughing time.

Even though we started with a comedy, next week we will look at an emotionally sad movie in “Pride Month.”