Birdcage

I absolutely adored this film. The humor was intelligent, not slapstick, and full of fun and lightheartedness. This film dealt with a lot of tough and difficult issues, such as homosexuality, identity crisis, tolerance and acceptance, and politics, by using humor

The main message of the film is to never change yourself for others. When Val asks his father and, consequently his mother Albert, to change themselves, everything goes wrong. Barbara’s parents only start to accept the family when they are being honest about themselves, and when they help them get away from the media. Sen. Keeley dislikes the “fake family” he knows because of how they are acting. He likes “Mrs. Coleman” because he thinks that “she” is a darling wonderful woman. He feels this way because she acts false in order to impress him. Once all the characters become honest with each other, they can finally accept who they are.

I think that it is ironic that the only people who have a problem with the future in-laws are the Keeleys. They dislike Val’s family because they act weird, and because they make assumptions about them. Val’s family knows that the Keeleys hate gays, and drags, but they never act out in dislike towards them. Val’s family has every right to dislike the senator and his family. They express their hatred for gays, well for anyone that is not a right-wing conservative. There was more hatred expressed towards things that they could not change- their sexual orientation. But Armand, Val, and Albert let Sen. Keeley sound like an idiot. However, to Sen. Keeley’s credit, he did not seem as upset by the fact that “Mrs. Coleman” was a man. He was stunned that Armand is Jewish. Those, like gays, who are given the least amount of acceptance from society, are the first people to accept those who are different than them. Armand and Albert try so hard to accept the senator and his wife in order to make Val happy. The Senator could care less about the happiness of his daughter.

This film showed the stupidity of politics at time. Sen. Keeley did not care at all about the death of his friend, but about the fact that he was found with a black, underage prostitute. He did not care about the happiness of his wife or his daughter, but how his election is going. He condemned Val’s family, but hoped that it wouldn’t influence their decision to vote for him.

While filming this movie, filmmaker Rick McKay went to Paris, London, San Francisco, and Atlanta to make a feature length documentary about drag queens. This documentary was used to train Nathan Lane and Robin Williams. I am glad this did this in order to fully grasp the culture of the drag queens, instead of making things up based on the stereotypes that people make of them. This gives the film an aspect of reality. I would hate to watch something filled with stereotypes because then I feel like we are mocking a culture that may be different from ours, but is a culture nonetheless.