The Birdcage

I recently spent a couple of hours with a friend of mine at the Borders across the street from where we work. While there, a rather lengthy (~40) list of movies was compiled for the purpose of expanding my cinematic horizons. This blog will be the process and the product of that list and it starts now:

The Birdcage:
The first movie of the list I decided to see was The Birdcage, mostly because I recently re-watched Good Will Hunting and was reminded of how incredible Robin Williams can be. I didn't love it, but I distinctly enjoyed it. On a very limited scale it gets a thumbs-up; I'd recommend it to other people. But I also thought there was a lot of potential there to be a _great_ movie, not just a good one. At the beginning I was excited. When Val told his parents that he was marrying a woman it was exactly the reaction _I_ would get from my parents if I told them I was marrying a man. But that was never really developed and I wish it had been. Another, even more disappointing scene: after Val asks his dad to change the entire apartment as well as their lifestyles around to meet his fiance's parents there's a wonderful scene where Robin Williams, in a very sober tone, examines the difficulties of being proudly different while still loving and wishing to make happy somebody who is asking you to change your life. It's a powerful theme and I think the movie could have retained its humor while still examining some of those more serious themes.

As far as the acting went, I was happy with it. I was actually very impressed with Calista Flockhart. I usually don't think of her as a very good actress (admittedly, I haven't seen her in very much) but she was _great_ in this. During scenes where she was in the background of the main action I found myself looking at her because all of her responses were _so_ realistic. She was perfect for the role, both in dealing with her uptight, conservative family and in trying to get everybody through the terrible meeting-of-the-parents. Everybody else was good, also. I was least impressed with Gene Hackman but that might be because I like his character the least. The only other character I was really impressed with was Hank Azaria as Agador. For some reason everything he did was laugh out loud funny, from his clothing, to his accent, to his demeanor, to his flops in the shoes and his breakdown during dinner. I think that without him the movie would have dragged a little but he kept it fresh and moved things along nicely.

The plot was predictable but still fun. I think everybody saw that they were going to have to dress up in order to get out of the building, dinner was suitably hilarious but none of the jokes were particularly original. All in all, it was a good movie, one I'm going to watch again at some point in the future.

Just, not too soon

1 down, 37 to go