Good concept, poorly executed.

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Watching Soapdish for the first time tonight I had an ever increasing sense of deja vu. I had seen this before - yet I knew I hadn't. It was all weirdly, strangely familiar but all new too. About half way through the film it clicked. I realised I was watching a Pedro Almodóvar film - made by Americans.It's all there: the frantic over the top relentless pace, the rapid line delivery, the over-the-top emotion and outrageous plot twists played out with the subtlety of a daytime soap. Even the Almodóvar visual trademark of having a strong red element in frame wherever possible is on show.I like Almodóvar's films. I didn't particularly like Soapdish. It lacked the edge that Almodóvar's films have, an edge that skirts, and often tips over into, downright vulgarity. His films are blatantly Soap Operatic but they are played straight. His films have contained all sorts of disturbing characters and situations: heroin-using nuns, people making (quite funny) jokes in the middle of a rape scene, carers having sex with their coma patients... the list goes on. Quite often in his films you find yourself laughing at things, or condoning things, which you KNOW you should find repellent but somehow... there you are... laughing.It's what makes him such a great film maker.At no point was anything even vaguely threatening or vulgar going to happen in Soapdish. It played safe. And strictly for laughs. Then, just to make sure, just in case the audience didn't get it, placed the grotesque soap operatics of the story into the setting of the studios of a daytime soap. Signalled to the audience as loudly as it could that this was not to be taken seriously and the style was deliberate. Corporate film making. They took the veneer of Almadovar's style - even the opening credits are familiar - and applied it wholesale to an acceptable fast-paced Hollywood farce.The real thing is much better.

I think this movie is brutally underrated. It has a brilliant script and the cast is amazing! Almost every little details in this movie contributes to its hilariousness. Sally Field and Kevin Kline, together they bought a "melodramatic -and - crazy - funny" look to the film. And the rest of the cast did a great job, too! You will find yourself eager to find out what Robert and Cathy's characters are up to next. The movie is so "soapdishly" good! I've watched it so many times and yet I can't stop laughing out loud. I think some people don't like it as they think it is absurd and ridiculous but they just don't get its wits. If I want to watch something pleasant and joyful for a Saturday night, I'll definitely choose Soapdish!

As a student of daytime soap history, I went into this with great anticipation, and did not come out unhappy with the results. Sally Field is Celeste Talbert, a daytime diva of Susan Lucci proportions that actually has an Emmy (or four) and comes off closer to Erika Slezak's "One Life to Live" character as "the queen of misery" as daytime network head Gary Marshall describes her as. She's as melodramatic off the set as she is on, and when a former leading man (Kevin Kline) returns to the show, she's ripe for ripping as secrets from her past prepare to turn her own world upside down, turning off her guiding light as she moves into her own edge of night.She's surrounded by a series of wacko characters-producer Robert Downey Jr., his "friend with benefits" and jealous supporting player Cathy Moriarty (who has secrets of her own, revealed through her hatred of practically everybody around her), sardonic writer Whoopie Goldberg, and nervous costume designer Kathy Najimy who creates outrageous hats for the cast that threaten to make Celeste look like "Gloria F'in Swanson!" and new cast member Elizabeth Shue resemble Tweetie Bird.You have to go into this film realizing that this soap opera parody isn't necessarily reflective of early 1990's soap opera. The sets are too glamorous for most soaps of this time (at the time, only "The Bold and the Beautiful" and "Santa Barbara" were really close to as lavish as this was) and some of the plot lines even inside the soaps reek of dialog far worse than anything heard on daytime. But to watch it for Field's tour-de-force performance (she parodies her infamous Oscar speech as Celeste picks up her umpteenth daytime Emmy) is to find delight in seeing Field out of her usual comfort zone set with her more dramatic films. Even her early sitcom appearances were far from outrageous, and she proves herself to be a good sport as she hams it up deliciously.Second to Field in overall performance is Moriarty, perfectly cast as an Amazon-like woman whose frizzed hair and overly short nurses' uniform are only overshadowed by her Elaine Stritch like raspy voice. Moriarty is obviously an actress who decided that with her bigger-than-life qualities in real life, she'd never make it as an ingénue, and just went all out to camp up. Kline, too, is very funny, screaming "Don't call me Mr. Loman!" when his Florida dinner theater performance of "Death of a Salesman" is preparing for its curtain rise for its Geritol-guzzling audience. This is a film meant mainly for fun, not only for soap fans, but for those who just simply want to laugh at the ridiculousness of the drama of life and see their own problems in perspective.

Every aspect of this film is exaggerated but Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg and Matthew Broderick perform delightfully and Elizabeth Shue is wonderful as (well, I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't seen the film by explaining her role).Is the story credible? No. Are the characters believable? No. Is the script especially good? No. Is the outcome even remotely worthy of suspended belief? No, no, no.But Kline, Goldberg and Broderick are major talents, and this may be Sally Field's best film performance ever.Leave your critical instincts in a lower drawer and enjoy.