THE BIRDCAGE (55)

Directed by: Mike Nichols

Starring: Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane

The Pitch: A gay nightclub-owner and his drag-queen partner have to try and act straight when his son announces he's to marry the daughter of an ultra-conservative Senator.

Theo Sez: You know that feeling when you watch a band you like on some glossy TV special, doing all their best songs but miming to a prerecorded track because it's too risky to have them play live? Well that's THE BIRDCAGE, a slick and funny farce that makes you laugh but feels somehow preprogrammed. From the opening shot - a helicopter-shot that turns into a Steadicam exploration of the inside of a nightclub, and must have taken days and/or thousands of dollars to get right - it teems with professional expertise and high production values. In fact, like an old vaudeville skit, everything about it feels professional, including the story and the actors: it's a bunch of seasoned pros doing some time-honoured routines (complete with old-fashioned gay stereotypes). Much of it is genuinely funny but it's not exactly breaking new ground, except perhaps in using the comic action to lampoon America's current climate of moral hysteria - though without rigour, and merely in order to bleat that drag-queens and conservative politicians, however extreme and (deliberately) caricatured, can get along together if they'd only give it a chance. Not having seen the original (the 1978 LA CAGE AUX FOLLES), it's impossible to know how far to credit these film-makers with the fast, tight structure and many effective gags - and, equally, how much to blame them for the underlying blandness.