The 1996 film “The Birdcage” is Mike Nichols’ adaptation of the hit French farce “La Cage Aux Folles” for American film audiences.

Armand Goldman (Robin Williams) is the owner of “The Birdcage”, a drag club in South Beach, Florida. His long-time companion Albert (Nathan Lane) is the club’s main attraction, “Starina”. They live together in a spacious apartment above the club, along with their live-in Guatemalan house-man Agador (Hank Azaria).

Armand’s 20-year-old son Val (Dan Futterman) arrives home from college and tells his father that he his getting married to his love, Barbara (Calista Flockhart). However, Barbara’s parents (Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest) are a highly-conservative senator and his wife, who don’t know that Armard is gay. The Senator is currently up for reelection, and so when his partner/co-founder of the Coalition for Moral Order is found dead with a black prostitute, the Senator decides to escape from the media madness and meet the future in-laws.

Val requests that his father pretend to be straight for the dinner with Barbara’s parents. He also tracks down his biological mother (Christine Baranski) to help sell the story, and asks the overly-flamboyant Albert to disappear for a couple days—which doesn’t sit well with the drama queen. While the dinner initially starts off well, the story starts to fall apart, things quickly get out of hand, and the arrival of the press doesn’t help matters either.

The last time I watched “The Birdcage” was probably 15 years ago, but it was still hilarious and I found myself laughing out loud several times. Save for some of the clothes, the film didn’t really feel dated. The story still felt relevant today, even though non-traditional families are much more commonplace and more widely accepted these days.

The cast is great and works really well together. One small gripe was that the engaged couple did not look like 20-year-olds (both actors were in their early 30s at the time)—however, this didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film as it didn’t affect the premise.

The highlights of the film for me were the performances by Nathan Lane and Hank Azaria. Lane plays the role of the drama queen to perfection, is absolutely hilarious as he tries to learn how to act straight, and is delightful as he (in drag) pretends to be Val’s mother and win over the Senator. Azaria also steals the show as the heavily-accented house-man who has little-to-no practical skills and loses all sense of balance when forced to wear shoes.

Besides the situational comedy, the film also makes great use of physical comedy and some snappy one-liners. Robin Williams is given a couple moments to do his usual impressions, but for the most part he ironically plays it more straight (so-to-speak) than his usual comedic roles of the time.

The video and audio presentation on the Blu-ray is quite good. The picture is quite sharp and clear, except for 2 obviously-green-screened scenes. While most of the film is dialogue, the 5.1 audio track really makes the night club performance scenes come alive.

Like most of the recent MGM 90th anniversary Blu-ray releases, this disc contains no menu, and the only bonus feature is the film’s theatrical trailer. It’s a shame that FHE isn’t taking the time to add more bonus material to these catalog releases.

What’s Included:

Film (1:59:13):

• 1080p / Widescreen 1.85:1
• Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish DD 2.0, French DD 5.1, Italian DTS 5.1,
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Italian

Extras:

• Theatrical Trailer (2:16)

Final Thoughts:

“The Birdcage” is a really fun film, with a great comedic premise, and hilarious performances by Nathan Lane and Hank Azaria. It’s a wacky comedy filled with fun situations and physical humor. The disc looks and sounds great, but contains no bonus features except for a theatrical trailer. However, the film itself is definitely worth watching!