junk-monkey 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.

SnoopyStyle The drama of a soap opera on screen and off. Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) is queen of the soaps. Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty) wants to be top dog. She gets the help of David Seton Barnes (Robert Downey Jr) to try and write difficulties for Celeste. They even bring back her old flame Jeffrey Anderson (Kevin Kline) to get under her skin. Only when her niece (Elisabeth Shue) comes on the show, it gets more complicated than even her most hated enemy could hope for.There is a lot of crazy characters going around in this. Some of them get quite hilarious. Sally Field is going off on this character. She's a lot of fun. The amount of acting talent here is amazing. The story off the screen is even more hilarious.

dapplegrey13 This is an absolutely entertaining film from open to close. Fine for your 12 and up kids, hilarious, and oh so charming. It is a classic at our house! Kevin Kline and Sally Field are magic together. The film's premise, characters, script, and direction are simply delightful.This is the kind of movie that SHOULD have been nominated for some Academy Awards, but wasn't. You can watch it time after time and laugh again, and share it with new friends and family members.If you enjoy comedy, and if you've ever seen even five minutes of a real daytime soap opera, you'll enjoy this funny, sweet comedy. It's one of our favorites.

WakenPayne OK the plot is that these people are fed up with actress Celeste Talbert after winning an award and Montana Moorhead and David Barnes are more than sick of seeing her get all the hype so what happens is they hire an actor that plays in a nowhere-near-successful-play-theatre Death of A Salesman who is named Jeffrey Anderson so what David here does is hire them when also a subplot goes around about actress Lori Craven which made me actually realise that Elizabeth Shue isn't a bad actress after all just made some horrid choices. eventually she acts on the soap opera (which soap opera's are about as much fun as thorns through your skin) the acting (on the set of the soap opera) is in the category of "so bad its funny". The twist makes the movie even funnier. When it comes to bad writing the writers were trying to make the soap opera bad...at least it would be better than the crap that gets praised on TV that is in the "Bad" category. The writing full stop is good. The acting enough said (You have a cast that won Oscars back in the day they gave their awards to popular movies). All in all a great movie."She's A Boy"Don't Ask