Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

just watch it!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

There are so many reasons to watch Steel Magnolias, and once you've watched it, you can cross it off your "classics to watch" list and move on to the next one.You'll appreciate the large cast (Shirley MacLaine, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Daryl Hannah, Tom Skerritt, Sam Shepard, Dylan McDermott) and you'll get a kick out seeing Julia Roberts in the movie just before she donned knee high boots for Pretty Woman. And yes, you'll laugh and shed a tear, but then you'll survive. This isn't Terms of Endearment.Steel Magnolias will appeal to the Fried Green Tomatoes, Crimes of the Heart, and August: Osage County. In other words, it's a movie about a bunch of Southern women muddling through life, with a little tragedy, a few chuckles, and a sweet tea or two. If you like those types of movies, add this to your weekend watch list and start popping that corn!

I absolutely love this movie. The performances are superb and the emotional range of these women is incredible. I rarely laugh out loud when I'm watching a DVD alone at home but this movie had me laughing out loud and for so long my sides were sore and I had tears rolling down my face and this happens every time I see this film. And at the other extreme, Sally Field's performance throughout was wonderful but her portrayal of the insanity of such loss and grief in the scene at the cemetery is gut wrenching and explores the whole insane range of emotions that are experienced with such profound grief. I was sobbing and even after repeated viewings - I do watch movies that I really like several times over a period of weeks or months and even years - her portrayal of this grieving mother has me first crying and then laughing every time I watch it.The lifelong bonds between these women are wonderful in their depth and complexity and their acceptance of each others idiosyncrasies that are so well portrayed by these amazing actresses is heartwarming and funny and very real. These women portray friendship at its best.I highly recommend this film, chick flick or not, it's fun and funny and gut wrenching and heartwarming. I laughed until I cried until I laughed again.Why at least some of these women did not receive Academy Awards for their brilliant performances of this amazing script, I'll never understand.I must also give high praise to the use of silence in this film. So many moments are given such importance and impact by the use of silence especially those very long moments in the hospital around 'the decision' spoke volumes.I do hope it is not possible to wear out a DVD because I might just watch it enough to wear it out!

Difficult to find fault with this feel good chick flick. Even Shirley MacLaine can't louse it up but it is a young Julia Roberts who crawls away with it despite strong competition from Olympia Dukakis and Sally Field. I was fortunate enough to see the play before I saw the movie, albeit an English production of an American play set in the Deep South which meant it had two strikes on it going in but the quality of the writing overcame that handicap and is evident in this fine adaptation. Friendship is the theme that runs through it and the fact that in this case it is female friendship is more or less irrelevant. There's a nice symmetry in that it begins with the wedding of the Roberts character and ends, to all intents and purposes, with her premature death following a kidney transplant. Films about the South tend to get it wrong as often as they get it right but when they do get it right, as in To Kill A Mockingbird and this one, they really get it right. A winner.

Robert Harling's off Broadway play based on the death of his real life sister had the good fortune of having him do the screen adaption. In expanding it for the big screen and shooting it in his native Louisiana, Steel Magnolias lost nothing of what he was trying to convey in his one set drama which only involved the six women who are the leads. In fact seeing them interact with other family and friends added well to Steel Magnolias.Still the root of the play is the conversations among six friends in Dolly Parton's Beauty Parlor in a small Louisiana bayou town. The friends are friendly enemies Olympia Dukakis and Shirley MacLaine and Sally Field and her daughter Julia Roberts. A new hairdresser is hired by Parton as it turns out on the day that Roberts is to be married and that is Darryl Hannah.Roberts is a diabetic and she takes some very big health risks when she gets pregnant and has a baby boy. These women despite a lot differences and some occasional cattiness are really tight and the health problems of Roberts unites them all.Steel Magnolias should have received a bit more recognition from the Academy than the nomination Julia Roberts got for Best Supporting Actress. If Steel Magnolias is nothing else it's an ensemble piece and recognizing Roberts over the others was unfair. For this story to work, all of the six females have to be good and all of them are.This story has everything, laughter, sadness, great joy, and great pathos. Sometimes the six women are putting out several of these emotions at one time.The best thing I can say about Steel Magnolias is that it is the kind of film you can watch over and over and be moved by it and maybe pick up an emotion you should have felt before in a particular scene. A rare and extraordinary work can do that and Steel Magnolias is a film for the ages.