June 1st begins pride month. I’ve had the opportunity on occasion to discuss films from my perspective as not just a blind film critic, but a gay blind film critic, but it is few and far between. This year, there’s so much hate being pushed around toward the LGBT community, that I just wanted to talk about and merge both of these worlds. So, I’m kicking it off with a movie that means a lot about me. I knew that in doing this, my already small fan base would start turning me off. You might be a reader of my site, but you may not know I also post reviews (often earlier) on my YouTube channel. Just in the few hours that my video has been up of this review, I have lost two subscribers, and that video has only gained one review. Just people seeing that float into their feed likely had them go out of their way to make sure that I would never appear again. It’s a tough decision, because I want to advocate for the things I am, and I take advocating for audio description quite seriously, so I guess we’ll just see what is left standing at the end of this month.

The birdcage is available on Amazon with TTS audio description. That means no company is cited at the end, though someone actually wrote a really solid audio description script for this movie. It is saddled with essentially an average AI voice, but the real problem is in the audio ducking of the description, which causes fluctuation in the sound of the film as the audio description track remains dominant. It’s not a great audio quality either, though that is hard to get out of an AI recorded track.

I chose The Birdcage because I’ve seen this probably 20 times. I love this movie, and I always have. I think Nathan Lane deserved an Oscar nomination, as he was a Golden Globe nominee that year. Adapted from the French stage play la Cage Aux Folles, which itself was adapted into a movie, and later given a sequel, then this adaptation, and also a Broadway musical that has been revived as recently with Kelsey grammar, has a unique story for me.

I was 13, and could neither drive to a theatre myself, nor could I buy a ticket to a Rated R movie on my own. The funny thing about The Birdcage, is that my mom had actually seen the film before me and loved it, and tried to buy a ticket for me to go in. Frequently, my theatre did not give a shit if my mom was dropping me off as long as she bought the ticket, but for this film they said she had to be there. So, she bought a ticket, and went and did something else, and I saw The Birdcage.

I grew up in the Ozarks, and I was also a kid who enjoyed his childhood and watched cartoons far longer than I should have for my age. So, adult content at 13 was still somewhat new to me, and really any film with sexual content. But, i was also 13, and I was thinking about who I was attracted to, and I seemed to be attracted to things no one else was, and I didn’t know how to talk about it, or even if I could. Representation for a gay kid growing up in Missouri is so limited, mostly to Will and Grace or Ellen, so when a mainstream film like The Birdcage came my way, i saw a healthy gay couple that had raised a kid together, and wanted nothing more than to grow old together. This was groundbreaking for me. It would still take me years to come out, after spending years in an area where you just didn’t say gay. But, at least I felt better about my thoughts. I felt like I wasn’t crazy.

The film is based around a gay couple, played marvelously by Robi Williams and Nathan lane, who find out that their son is getting married to the daughter of a very conservative politician (Gene Hackman). This leads to the future in-laws meeting, in the most hilarious fashion, all with the guise that Williams is just a cultural attaché, and Lane’s drag queen can be substituted for Val’s never before seen birth mother (Christine Baranski). Things do not go as planned, and despite trying to hide everything that makes his family what the other side would hate, Val has to be honest about who his real mother and father are. I always find it so touching when he refers to Lane as his mother, not because of the breaking of gender norms in that title, but because it acknowledges who was there and put in the work. As the more feminine of the couple, mother would fit him more than father.

Lane is perfect. He gives one of the great comedic performances in film, and should have been recognized for it. Hank Azaria, as a very over the top house maid is also delightful. Williams is predictably terrific, especially in his moments with Lane where he is more serious about spending his life with his best friend, and both Dianne Wiest and Gene Hackman round out the cast like the legendary talents that they are. mike Nichols’s direction is perfect, and I just love this film.

Hackman’s extreme right conservative politician seemed like a bit of an oddity or outlier in the 90’s, but nowadays it feels like everyone is this character or even worse. A film that teaches us to look past the surface, the labels, and see people for who they are and accept them for it, still has a lovely message today.

I’m proud to be where I am today, and I got through a rough childhood because of films like this. I do wish it had human audio description thought.

Final Grade: A+