The Birdcage Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The Birdcage Blu-ray Movie Review

Call the Audubon Society

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 8, 2014

French playwright Jean Poiret's 1973 farce La Cage aux Folles has led a long and fruitful life. In 1978, Poiret's tale of gay owners of a drag club trying to pass as a straight couple became a successful film starring Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault; the leads' hilarious chemistry made La Cage aux Folles the top-grossing foreign release in America for many years. In 1983, a musical version opened on Broadway with a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Jerry Herman, who had written the music and lyrics for Hello, Dolly! and Mame. The show swept the box office and the Tony awards and has since been revived twice on Broadway, both times to profit and acclaim. The musical and the movie retained the play's original French setting in St. Tropez, where the European environment lent the story a certain easygoing je ne sais quoi.

In 1996, though, former comedy partners Mike Nichols (as director) and Elaine May (as screenwriter) took the bold and potentially risky step of transplanting Poiret's play to the shores of Miami Beach and refashioning the characters and story for the culture wars of America in the Nineties. Smartly cast and sharply directed, the result topped the box office for three weeks and gave Broadway star Nathan Lane the best screen role of his career to date. In an inspired bit of reverse typecasting, Lane was paired with Robin Williams, a comedian well-known for excess. In the Birdcage, however, it's Williams who has to play the calm center of an increasingly turbulent storm. And just as his character advises one of the club's performers, Williams holds it all inside.

The Birdcage is the name of South Beach's hottest night spot, a drag club where the lead act is a singing comedienne known as "Starina". In real life, "she" is Albert Goldman (Lane), the flamboyant life-partner of the club's manager/owner, Armand Goldman (Robin). Every inch the diva, Albert makes the nightly preparation for her act more dramatic than the show she performs, requiring endless coaxing, reassurance and manipulation before she will be persuaded not to let down her public. Armand and the Goldmans' Latin houseboy, Agador (Hank Azaria, with a hilarious accent), have become experts at handling Albert's tantrums, though Armand is clearly weary after so many years of catering to her demands.

On this particular night, Albert is convinced that Armand is seeing another, younger man, but it turns out that he is simply receiving a visit from his 20-year-old son, Val (Dan Futterman), the result of Albert's brief attempt to explore heterosexuality. Since Val's mother, Katherine (Christine Baranski), had no interest in raising him, Armand and Albert have done so, but tonight Val wants to talk to his father alone. He has an announcement to make. He's getting married.

Unfortunately for a boy with two fathers, the girl for whom he's fallen is Barbara Keeley (Calista Flockhart, then a little-known Broadway actress a year away from TV fame in Ally McBeal). Barbara is the daughter of Sen. Kevin Keeley (Gene Hackman), a leading spokesman of the family values and anti-gay movement, who just happens to be suffering a PR nightmare at the moment, because his colleague and co-founder of the Coalition for Moral Values, has been found dead under compromising circumstances that have the press mobbing the Keeley residence for a statement. Mrs. Keeley (Dianne Wiest) thinks a big, glamorous wedding would be just the thing to distract the press. Clearly, Barbara hasn't told her parents much about her fiancé's family.

Having established these two flocks of opposites, Nichols sends the Keeleys south to meet Val's parents, then stands back to watch the feathers fly as the Goldmans try to "pass" for common fowl. Lie piles upon lie, deception upon deception, and even a tiny detail like the pronunciation of the name "Goldman" becomes an occasion for comic misunderstanding. (Believe it or not, it's a Greek name. Like "Agador", whose name becomes "Agador Spartacus".) Meanwhile, the press has caught on to the Senator's whereabouts, thanks to enterprising stringers from the National Enquirer played by Tom McGowan and Grant Heslov (the future producer of such films as Argo and August: Osage County). Who said that tabloids can't do real reporting?

Nichols and May were an intelligent comedy team, and Nichols has always been a uniquely thoughtful director. He clearly understood that the essence of Poiret's play and its previous successful adaptations was the reliance on stereotypes pushed to absurd extremes and laughed at equally. Nathan Lane, whose stage presence has always been volcanic, makes Albert not so much a drag queen as a parody of one. However big you may think "her" personality might be in real life, Lane makes it bigger and more ridiculous. (In a contest with Michel Serrault's Albin from the 1978 French film, the winner would be tough to call.) In the sequences where Armand tries to teach Albert how to behave like a man, the behaviors he demonstrates are equally absurd: a parody of masculinity, albeit a parody that's uncomfortably close to reality, as good parodies usually are. To the extent The Birdcage has a serious underlying theme, it's about overcoming stereotypes and preconceptions. But really, who has time for anything serious when you're laughing over the pratfalls of Hank Azaria's Agador, who is forced to wear shoes for the Keeleys' visit and keeps falling because he's used to bare feet?

In the end, The Birdcage turns out to be about an old and familiar subject, which is that two families, who would otherwise never meet, have to find a way to get along, because their kids are forcing them to become in-laws. That's about as classic an American story as you can find.

The Birdcage Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Nichols has always worked with top cinematographers, and on The Birdcage he had the prescience to recruit Emmanuel Lubezki, who has since become one of the most sought-after cameramen in the business, most recently winning an Oscar for Gravity. Lubezski captured the cheerful pastel tones of Southern Florida, which contrast neatly with the somber hues of the Washington settings from which the Keeleys depart for their migration south. He also managed to light spaces so that Williams and Lane, both incorrigible improvisers, could move freely and still create usable takes.

Fox/MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a good but not great presentation of this catalog title. The source material is in excellent shape, blacks are solid, and the various color palettes have been reproduced with obvious care. Where the presentation falls short is in fine detail, which is frequently soft and slightly blurry. This is only to be expected in scenes suffused with bright lights (e.g., the Birdcage's stage shows), but it should not be the case in scenes with ordinary light, as in, for example, the Goldmans' apartment. It is, of course, possible that the original photography was deliberately soft—I'm not going to claim a detailed recall after 18 years—but it's troubling that the image does not reproduce any obvious or natural grain structure. To my eye, The Birdcage appears to have been subjected to some degree of degraining, and fine detail appears to have suffered in the process.

With no real extras on the disc, the average bitrate of 29.92 Mbps is sufficient to avoid any compression issues.

The Birdcage Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Birdcage was released with a 5.1 sound mix that is reproduced here in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1. The ambiance of the Birdcage club, especially the presence of the audience, benefits greatly from the full surround array, as does the supporting musical track with its inventive arrangements by Broadway orchestrator Jonathan Tunick (Stephen Sondheim's arranger of choice). The track's bass extension is important for several numbers, notably the various renditions of "We Are Family" that occur at the beginning and end of the film. The dialogue is always clear.

The Birdcage Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than a trailer (1080p: 1.85:1; 2:16), the disc contains no extras. As is typical of MGM catalog fare released through Fox, the Blu-ray has been mastered with BD-Java, no main menu and without the bookmark feature. If you stop the disc during playback, you cannot resume from the same point.

The Birdcage Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If anything, The Birdcage has improved with age, which often happens with well-crafted farce. The stereotypes that were absurd in 1996 are even more so today, after nearly two decades of often fractious but now irreversible social change, and the physical comedy at which much of the film's cast excels never grows old. The Blu-ray from MGM and Fox, while somewhat lacking in the video department, is still an enjoyable viewing experience, and like most MGM catalog titles, it can be acquired at a bargain price. Taking all that into consideration, the disc is recommended.