Soapdish Reviews

If you haven’t figured this out by now, let me just throw it all out there: I rather enjoy meta-textual works. I recently completed At Swim-Two-Birds, and found that novels strange layers of self-reference and literalizing the concept of characters hijacking the plot to meet their own desires to be a witty and strange read. So a film like Soapdish is right up my alley.

It’s a delicate balancing act in lampooning the conventions of a daytime soap opera and giddily embracing them at the same time. Except while the film does take place on an actual daytime soap opera set, it applies the clichéd story lines to the production of the series. A long buried secret involving paternity results and family connections that were thought to be long buried? Oh yeah. A devious, highly sexual femme fatale brainwashing a poor sap into doing her dirty work while clawing her way to the top? Check. A long lost lover returning and bringing with him years of emotional baggage and acid? Yep, that’s in here too. Even the names of the various characters practically scream soap opera pulp – Celeste Talbert, Montana Moorehead, Lori Craven, Ariel Maloney, David Seaton Barnes. Characters on All My Children or the characters in this film? Those aren’t even the names they have on the soap they’re making within the film.

While most of the jokes are uproarious and aimed more at the general strangeness and semi-tacky nature of soap opera writing, one harkens back to the worst of the genre. A late reveal that a character is a trans woman and publicly shamed, humiliated and dismissed with it is an ugly reminder that this type of humor was once considered perfectly fine. Which is a shame since it does darken a film that for so long was a zesty, tart and smart piece of satire about the behind-the-scenes scandal of a popular soap opera hijacking the actual material they’re trying to film.

An incredible ensemble cast that includes Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Shue, Robert Downey Jr., Cathy Moriarty, Carrie Fisher, Garry Marshall and Terri Hatcher, and if you count the amount of Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Grammy nominations and wins amongst that bunch it becomes even more impressive. I said that the film was a delicate balance, and this group of actors manages to make the entire enterprise both believable and occasionally winks at us to let us know that they’re in on the joke. Field gets to indulge in her histrionics, but it works for a grand dame of daytime. Same goes for Kline as a down-and-out thespian hungry for a routine to the spotlight that this provides him. Shue, as in real life, plays the up-and-coming ingénue – what happened to her? She’s a solid actress. And Moriarty seems to relish playing a devious character, it isn’t terribly surprising that post-Raging Bull she turned that sharp, deep voice into a career as a character actress specializing in wicked women.

Soapdish is an incredibly fun bit of satire, at once playing these conventions perfectly straight and taking the piss out of them. A bit loud and messy in spots? Oh sure, but who cares really when the results are this much fun.