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.
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.