SOAPDISH

(May 1991, U.S.)

In the summer of 1991, I saw EVERYTHING, and that's no exaggeration! I saw the the blockbuster hits (BACKDRAFT, ROBIN HOOD, TERMINATOR 2), the pointlessly stupid (HOT SHOTS, NAKED GUN 2 1/2), the downright terrible (LIFE STINKS, MOBSTERS) and the occasional entertaining fillers like CITY SLICKERS and SOAPDISH. It was actually SOAPDISH that inaugurated that long, hot summer for me one fine afternoon in the merry, merry month of May. It's the outrageous backstage story of the cast and crew behind a popular fictional TV soap opera called The Sun Also Sets. In a way, the timing of this film was almost perfect because I had just recently decided to stop watching ABC-TV's GENERAL HOSPITAL after nine long years when the show's writing finally became to intolerable for me to continue with it. Now I'd have a good reason to laugh at all those years I wasted wondering just what would continue to happen after the infamous 1981 wedding of Luke and Laura.

I'd seen Sally Field in some lighter material before, mainly alongside Burt Reynolds and his speeding sports cars, but my association with her at that time was mostly the Oscar-winning dramatic roles that ultimately proved how much, "You like me! You really like me!" As the mature and long-running soap opera star Celeste Talbert, Sally is irresistible fun as a woman constantly on the paranoid defense against her ambitious co-stars, who more often than not, merely play second-rate nurses on this hospital drama. She's also being targeted by the show's young producer David (played by Robert Downey, Jr. before his repeated real-life drug problems really started to kick in) because he's been promised sexual favors by one of her co-stars Montana Moorehead (played by Cathy Moriarty) if he'll get her kicked off the show. In fact, to this very day, I've never forgotten one of her more interesting and funny sexual enticements in which she promises David, "Get rid of Celeste and Mr. Fuzzy is yours!" Meanwhile, the new girl on the scene is Lori Craven (played by Elisabeth Shue) and possibly the hottest rising young actress to ever hit the show, and who also just happens to be Celeste's real-life niece...or as it turns out in a pure homage to the bullshit drama of modern soap operas...her secret daughter (oooh, the plot does thicken!).

Progressing ever further, we're treated to the crazy lunacy of who's sleeping with who, who's in love with who, who's carrying whose baby, who's screwing who behind whose back, who's really a transsexual in real life, and of course, how much of it is really true and how much of it is just tabloid crap for the ready-and-willing ears of Entertainment Tonight's Leeza Gibbons and John Tesh (remember them?). It's all funny stuff from a well-rounded cast of popular stars from Sally to Whoopi Goldberg to a cameo from the late Carrie Fisher who's not too ashamed to admit that she's "a bitch!" But it's surely Kevin Kline who steals the show in a comic performance that's still fresh off of his milestone performance in A FISH CALLED WANDA just three years prior. You can truly feel the hatred he feels for Celeste and all the unforgivable crap she put him through twenty years earlier. His role also reminds us of just how much television (or any other media, for that matter) can get away with if they want to badly enough. I mean, according to Whoopi, his character wasn't just killed off back in the 1970s, but outright beheaded ("He doesn't have a head!", she shouts). It's all uproarious joy and entertaining spoof and silliness without turning into mind-insulting stupidity. Sure, it's no TOOTSIE (1982), but it provides a good reason to laugh at the soap opera genre beyond it's content that supposed to pass for serious drama, art and performance (yeah, right!).

And finally, in what other film can you see Teri Hatcher look like this...

Lois Lane never looked like that!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Jeffrey Anderson: "You have beautiful eyes."
Ariel Maloney: "Ooh, they're nothing compared to my tits!"