Robin Williams Tribute Month: The Birdcage (1996)

I think this is the only hilarious comedy on the list where Robin Williams plays a straight man to someone else's silly character. That's not to say he isn't over the top, but compared to his co-star Nathan Lane, he seems relatively subdued.

Armand Goldman (Williams) owns a successful South Beach gay club where his partner Albert (Lane) is his star drag queen. One day, Armand's son Val (Dan Futterman), that he had when he was younger, turns up to announce that he is getting married.

Meanwhile, Val's fiance Barbara Keeley (Calista Flockhart) is breaking the news to her own parents. Her father is the hard-line Senator Keeley (Gene Hackman), who is the co-founder of The Coalition for Moral Order. Because of this fact, Barbara has lied to her parents and said that Val's father is the cultural attaché to Greece, rather than bear the outrage that would come if they found out that Val's parents are in fact gay.

After a scandal involving Senator Keeley's associate and the subsequent media circus, the Keeley's decide to drive to Miami to meet Val's parents. This causes stress for Armand and Albert who must figure out a way to ruin Val's chance at marriage. They try everything from trying to make Albert act more masculine to pretending that he is just an uncle.

Mike Nichols has crafted quite a funny movie that for the time was pretty out there. A movie about two very conservative people meeting a flamboyantly gay couple is supposed to break down barriers. Indeed when you have Williams (one of the biggest stars at the time) playing an openly gay character, it really made people think. That's one of the reasons I like this movie so much. It did get people thinking at the time and because of it, people did start to be more accepting (not everyone I know, but this is hardly the place to discuss it).

Now I know I said earlier that Williams seems a little more subdued in this film. That's not entirely the case. Compared to Lane and Hank Azaria, he just isn't as flamboyant. He also has to carry some of the more emotional scenes. But he does get a chance to be hilarious. The scene where he is teaching Albert to be more masculine really stands out.

Speaking of Albert, Nathan Lane very nearly steals the show for me. His outlandish behaviour is hysterical. The other stand out performance for me is Hank Azaria as the Goldman's gay housekeeper, Agador Spartacus. Again he is over the top, but does it in his own way.

Verdict: A fun and refreshing comedy that does have a little bit of substance to it.