Ce cadeau va faire plaisir à Marie.

No. Aller + infinitive is a very common French way to talk about the near future.

So va faire plaisir means is going to please / will make happy, not literally goes to make.

• va = goes / is going
• faire = to do / to make

Here, va is singular because the subject is ce cadeau.

Compare:

• Ce cadeau va faire plaisir à Marie. = This gift is going to please Marie.
• Ces cadeaux vont faire plaisir à Marie. = These gifts are going to please Marie.

Because faire plaisir à quelqu’un is a fixed and very common French expression.

It literally uses faire + plaisir, but as a whole it means something like:

• to please someone
• to make someone happy
• to give someone pleasure

French often uses expressions like this where English might prefer a single verb.

You can also say:

• Ce cadeau va plaire à Marie.

That is also correct, but faire plaisir à often feels a little more like bringing joy or making someone happy, while plaire à is more simply to be pleasing to.

Because with faire plaisir, the person receiving the pleasure is introduced by à.

The pattern is:

faire plaisir à quelqu’un

So:

• faire plaisir à Marie
• faire plaisir à Paul
• faire plaisir aux enfants

This is different from English, where we usually say please someone without a preposition.

A very useful thing to remember is that the person is treated like an indirect object in French.

It becomes lui.

So:

• Ce cadeau va faire plaisir à Marie. becomes
• Ce cadeau va lui faire plaisir.

Not la, because Marie is not a direct object here.

This is a very common pattern:

• Ça va lui faire plaisir.
• Ton message va leur faire plaisir.

Because faire plaisir is a fixed idiomatic expression.

In this expression, French normally just says faire plaisir, with no article.

So you should learn it as a whole chunk:

faire plaisir à quelqu’un

rather than trying to build it word by word.

That is why:

• Ce cadeau va faire plaisir à Marie. ✅
• Ce cadeau va faire du plaisir à Marie. ❌

Because cadeau is a masculine singular noun, and it begins with a consonant sound.

The demonstrative adjectives are:

• ce for masculine singular before a consonant
• cet for masculine singular before a vowel or silent h
• cette for feminine singular
• ces for plural

So:

• ce cadeau ✅
• cet ami ✅
• cette idée ✅
• ces cadeaux ✅

Since cadeau is masculine singular and starts with c, we use ce.

Yes, often it can.

In everyday French, ce / cette / ces can sometimes correspond to either this or that, depending on context.

If French wants to be more specific, it can add:

• -ci = this
• -là = that

So:

• ce cadeau-ci = this gift
• ce cadeau-là = that gift

But very often, French just says ce cadeau and lets the context make it clear.

Yes, absolutely.

That sentence is also correct:

• Ce cadeau plaira à Marie.

It uses the simple future of plaire.

The difference is mainly one of style and nuance:

• va faire plaisir = very common in spoken French, often feels more immediate
• plaira = also common, a bit more compact, sometimes a little more formal or written

Both are natural.
So you might hear either:

• Ce cadeau va faire plaisir à Marie.
• Ce cadeau plaira à Marie.

The structure is:

subject + conjugated verb + infinitive + expression + indirect object

More specifically:

• Ce cadeau = subject
• va = conjugated verb
• faire = infinitive
• plaisir = part of the fixed expression
• à Marie = the person affected

So French keeps faire plaisir together, and then adds à Marie after it.

That is why the sentence sounds natural as:

Ce cadeau va faire plaisir à Marie

and not with Marie placed earlier in the sentence.