"The Birdcage" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Originating 20 years ago in France as a stage play by Jean Poiret, La Cage Aux Folles was turned into a movie, which spawned two dire sequels, and later into a successful stage musical. In its latest incarnation, the enduring comic farce of Poiret's play is transplanted to present day America, to Miami's colourful South Beach area, for a smart and sophisticated updating in The Birdcage, which is scripted by Elaine May and directed by her former on stage and off stage partner, Mike Nichols.

The movie opens on a dazzling helicopter shot as the camera glides over the ocean, on to dry land, across a busy street and inside the flamboyantly designed Birdcage nightclub as an exuberant remix of We Are Family pulsates on the soundtrack. While that Sister Sledge disco classic is used to accompany the on stage routines of the club's drag acts, it also serves as an ironic signal of the movie's wry commentary on the present US political bandwagon for family values.

There is, obviously, a certain familiarity about the narrative to anyone who has seen La Cage Aux Folles in one form or another, but one of the principal pleasures of The Birdcage is the anticipation such familiarity encourages and the sheer aplomb with which the movie delivers on that anticipation. And when the movie finally brings its two disparate couples together, the confrontation is truly hilarious.

One of those two couples is gay: Armand (Robin Williams) who runs the Birdcage, and Albert (Nathan Lane), his temperamental but loving partner for two decades and the club's star drag performer. The other couple comprises the extreme right wing Senator Keeley (Gene Hackman), who is Cofounder of the Campaign for Moral Order, and his, much suffering wife, Louise (Dianne Wiest). What brings the two couples together is the engagement of the Keeleys' daughter to Armand's son, the result of Armand's one brief heterosexual alliance.

Some over sensitive commentators have attacked what they perceive as the movie's offensive gay stereotypes as has also been the case with the current French serious comedy, Gazon Maudit (French Twist) but that criticism falls wide of the mark in both cases. In the case of The Birdcage, the character of Albert has been an outrageous drag queen in every incarnation of La Cage Aux Folles, and to change him now for the sake of token political correctness would be as silly as trying to get the character to walk like John Wayne - as Albert is forced to do by Armand in one of the movie's funniest sequences.

In tact, The Birdcage is mildly subversive at a time when notions of family values are being tossed around with, er, gay abandon. Here is a movie which states un equivocally that a loving, middle aged couple who just happen to be gay men have raised a son for the first 20 years of his life and that the boy has turned out quite untainted by the experience. The joke in The Birdcage is on the absurdly moralising and hypocritical conservative senator, whose Cofounder in the moral order movement has passed away in a sexually compromising position.

In a rare comedy role, Gene Hackman plays the senator in a perfectly deadpan performance, and never more so than in a banal, conversation tilling monologue as he extols the changing American landscape. Beyond bursting into, a couple of virtuoso routines, Robin Williams is unusually understated as Armand - and finally eschewing the dewy eyed sentiment which has dogged even his funniest comedy roles, he has never been more effective on screen. As Albert, the Broadway performer Nathan Lane shines in his first major screen role, while the reliable Dianne Wiest makes more than could have been hoped from her underwritten supporting role.

Mighty Aphrodite (15) Screen at D'Olier Street, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

This week's other new comedy also offers an entertaining journey through familiar territory, as the prolific Woody Allen plays yet another neurotic who becomes embroiled in romantic and sexual complications in the spirited and upbeat Mighty Aphrodite, which derives its title from the Greek goddess of love. Taking that reference many steps further, Allen uses a Greek chorus to interrupt and comment on the behaviour of the movie's characters as the narrative develops. An initially amusing device, the employment of the Greek chorus wears thin, after a while and ultimately registers as merely intrusive.

The film features Allen as a sportswriter who is married to a much younger woman, an art dealer played by Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he adopts a child. If this sounds familiar, well, that's because it is.

Unwilling to deal with the problems in his marriage and blissfully unaware that a gallery owner (Peter Weller) is trying to seduce his wife, the sportswriter becomes obsessed with the three year old prodigy who is his adopted son and he deviously seeks out the biological mother of the child, discovering, to his snobbish horror that she is a prostitute who works in porno movies.

She is played by the Oscar winning actress Mira Sorvino, who comfortably steals the movie in a performance so winning and knowing that it transcends the picture's condescending approach to her and the boxer (Michael Rapaport) with whom Allen tries to fix her up.

"Mute Witness" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

The Beirut born, English raised and German based commercials director, Anthony Waller, makes a cracking cinema debut with the taut and tongue in cheek thriller, Mute Witness. Its teasing opening, parody of horror movies introduces three Americans making a film in Moscow with a Russian crew. When one of the Americans, a mute make up and special effects artist (played by Russian actress Marina Sudina) is unwittingly locked into the huge old film studio one night, she is shocked to witness two of the film's Russian team filming a snuff movie on the set.

What follows is an ingeniously assembled and consistently gripping thriller which also involves the KGB, the Moscow police and a mysterious criminal kingpin. The movie plays cunningly with reality and illusion and with the tricks of film making as it shoves the audience inch by inch closer to the edge of the seat. Waller sustains the suspense with admirable skill, only rarely giving the audience a sudden moment of light relief or a gasp of breath.

Hugh Linehan adds:

"Sudden Death" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Jean Claude Van Damme plays a Pittsburgh fireman charged with checking the safety measures at an ice hockey match in this formula one man against the world vehicle. When bad guy Powers Boot he seizes control of the stadium and takes the Vice President hostage, our Belgian hero sets out to foil the dastardly plot.

In common with other Van Damme films, the unfortunate villains keep dropping their guns or running out of ammunition so that the Muscles tram Brussels can demonstrate his karate skills. At least he's not required to act too much - the script wisely gets an of that staff out of the way in the first 10 minutes.