Twenty-Four Years Later, The Birdcage Remains An Endlessly Delightful Comedy

Boy, couldn't we all just use a fun movie right now? With new theatrical films being paused right now thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak, we must turn to classic features for our doses of cinematic fun. Luckily, there's an endless sea of options in regards to 20th-century cinema that will leave your heart feeling full. You can't go wrong with romps starring Gene Kelly or Katharine Hepburn. Similarly, I guarantee you won't be able to stop cackling at The Birdcage. A 1996 Mike Nichols directorial effort based on the 1978 movie La Cage aux Folles, The Birdcage does just what every good comedy should do: keep the hearty laughs coming.


The Birdcage focuses on romantic couple Armand Goldman (Robin Williams) and Albert Goldman (Nathan Lane), the former being a director and the latter being an actor. They live a pleasant life South Beach running a drag club known as The Birdcage. Their 20-year-old son Val (Dan Futterman) returns home one night with some super important news: he's getting married. The young woman he's marrying comes from a pair of extremely conservative parents, with the father, Kevin Keely (Gene Hackman), being an influential Senator. His fiancee is bringing her parents down to meet Val's folks and they've set up a facade that Val belongs to a heterosexual married couple.

This leads to Val asking if Armand can pretend to be married to a woman for just one night. This request will also require the exceedingly flamboyant Albert to put on an act of being a good o'l fashioned straight man to appease the Keely's. So sets in motion a series of wacky events that managed to constantly tickle my funny bone. Sometime's there's profound reasons for enjoying a movie and sometimes something like The Birdcage wins your heart by being a hoot. In an impressive win for a mainstream American comedy, The Birdcage manages to create comedy involving queer characters without ever making those characters a punchline.

Instead, Elaine May's screenplay (what a writing wizard she is for managing to write both this and Mikey & Nicky with equal levels of success) has a good heart to it that always makes sure the closed-minded characters like the Keely's are the ones at the butt of the joke. Gags involving Albert Goldman stem not from mocking but from Nathan Lane's comic timing on some exquisitely-written lines as well as him struggling to adhere to society's narrowly-defined idea of "acceptable" masculinity. The former quality related to Lane's skill with comic timing really cannot be praised enough. Lane's way of saying "I pierced the toast!!" with such dramatic flair is a thing of comic beauty.

Playing opposite Lane is Robin Williams. This is a performer well-known for his over-the-top motormouthed comedic turns but in The Birdcage, Williams actually functions as a straight man for Lane's character. Numerous movies (Insomnia and Good Will Hunting chief among them) have demonstrated that reserved Robin Williams is a thing of beauty and The Birdcage is no exception. Williams has a wonderfully understated quality to a number of his comic line deliveries while he uses his more muted performance to excellent effect when selling his characters' key moments of poignancy. A scene where Armand tells Albert he'll have to move his grave plot next to Albert's "so that I don't miss a laugh" touches your heart thanks to Williams' quiet but powerful acting.

Save for Dan Futterman's role (which can be chalked up to the script overplaying Val's wish to have his parents go back into the closet, boy can he be insufferable!), the whole cast in The Birdcage is excellent. Gene Hackman particularly shines as Kevin Keely in a role that shows how Hackman, despite being known for his work in grim dramas, really did have a gift for comedy. The actors work under the assured direction of Mike Nichols while inhabiting a variety of lovely sets designed by Bo Welsh. His production design does a great job of visually reflecting the characters as well as providing a few extra visual gags. That latter quality is especially apparent in Armand and Albert's revamped "straight couple" household, which looks like some kind of creepy monastery.

To put it simply, The Birdcage is thoroughly delightful fare, just the kind of top-to-bottom enjoyable production we could all use right now.  The only drawback to The Birdcage is how it reminds viewers what little progress Hollywood has made for queer characters since its release. Despite The Birdcage scoring massive box office success in 1996, Hollywood has frustratingly refused to regularly deliver broadly appealing LGBTQIA+ features in the years since. They'll make a thousand 3D movies once Avatar becomes a big deal but successful light-hearted movies with queer leads are totally anomalies not worth repeating.  Oh well, at least we'll always have The Birdcage.