(revisiting Robin Williams catalog)

Mike Nichols’ The Birdcage is the American remake of La Cage aux Folles, with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a gay couple running a drag club in South Beach. When Williams’ son brings home his fiancée whose parents happen to be ultra-conservative politicians (Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest), the setup becomes a classic farce: can this flamboyant household pass for “normal” long enough to survive one dinner?

Williams and Lane absolutely kick it. Both are tremendous actors and comedians, and both turn in top performances here. Williams plays the relative straight man, grounded and capable, while Lane unleashes controlled chaos as Albert, the club’s star performer who can’t quite hide his true self no matter how hard he tries. Their chemistry is genuine; beneath all the comedy is a portrait of a long-term partnership built on real love and affection. This is Mike Nichols at the height of his powers as both stage and film director in the '90s, and The Birdcage is his prize, a perfectly calibrated comedy that never sacrifices humanity for laughs.

This is one of the early gay films that treats its characters with affection rather than as punchlines. Yes, there’s comedy in Albert’s dramatics and the elaborate charade everyone must maintain, but the joke is never on their queerness; it’s on hypocrisy, on the absurdity of having to hide, on conservative politicians who preach family values while embodying none. Hank Azaria’s Agador adds another layer of inspired lunacy as the housekeeper who can’t quite master “masculine” domesticity.

It’s funny, or perhaps very sad, how the politics in this film haven’t aged. The right-wing moral panic, the performance of traditional values by people who traffic in cruelty, the idea that certain families are acceptable and others must hide to survive—we’re still fighting these battles nearly three decades later. What was satire then feels like documentary now.

But The Birdcage endures because humor and humanity are so important, especially when they’re deployed together. Nichols understood that comedy can be generous, that laughter doesn’t require cruelty, that the best farce reveals truth while making us smile. Williams and Lane deliver performances that are both hilarious and heartfelt, reminding us why both were masters of their craft.

This one holds up beautifully.