La Cage aux Folles (1978)
Directed by Édouard Molinaro
Two gay men living in St. Tropez have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces he is getting married. They try to conceal their lifestyle and their ownership of the drag club downstairs when the fiancée and her parents come for dinner.
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What critics compared La Cage aux Folles to
As shown by the screenplay he wrote for “La Cage aux Folles,” he prefers to make low art—thin, fast, and funny—out of Person A being mistaken for Person B, leaving the rest of the alphabet to scratch their heads.
Actually, make that Peter Pan with a dash of Keith Richards and the flouncy sashay of a “La Cage aux Folles” refugee.
Some Like It Hot, Tootsie and La Cage Aux Folles are but three triumphant comic examples of cinematic cross-dressing, but it's an undeniable fact that male-to-female gambits always seem to work better than female-to-male.
Meeting prospective in-laws has probably been fodder for comedies since the time of Aristophanes, but the cliché can still strike a chord if delivered with some cleverness—witness “La Cage aux Folles” (though not the mediocre English-language remake) or “The In-Laws” (again the original, not its equally mediocre remake).
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During an interminable middle passage aboard Shakespeare's flying ship, the man known for playing such toughs as Jake La Motta and Jimmy Conway camps it up -- think less a riff on Keith Richards and more "La Cage Aux Folles" -- in a performance that can only be described as deranged.
However, this is a movie that's really is about the relationship, and in that sense it has more in common with something like "Brief Encounter" than "La Cage aux Folles."
When Mike Nichols ("The Graduate" and "Heartburn") saw the original French film of Jean Poiret's popular play "La Cage aux Folles," he immediately wanted to direct an American version with a script by his former comedy partner, Elaine May.
In this American remake of "La Cage Aux Folles," the French play that became a French movie that became an American musical, Lane plays Albert, the drag queen who has lived for 20 years with Armand (Williams), the somewhat less swishy owner of The Birdcage, the nightclub in which Albert performs as the inimitable Starina.
"The Birdcage," starring Robin Williams as a gay father who tries to play it straight for his son's future in-laws, is a very careful remake of "La Cage Aux Folles," a 1978 French film based on the famous stage play of the same name.
“The Birdcage” is a remake of the 1978 farce “La Cage aux Folles,” which itself was based on a 1973 French play by the same name.
One swell reason for seeing this fresh Americanized remake of La cage aux folles—the French farce about a middle-aged gay couple—is its hilarious depiction of Pat Buchanan as played by Gene Hackman, which implies, among other things, that only a drag queen could adequately fulfill Buchanan's vision of ideal womanhood.