By Marc S. Sanders
To get inside the head of a character on a soap opera would best be portrayed by someone who’s literally living a soap opera off the set. That’s the paramount theme of every member of the cast and crew of the daytime drama The Sun Also Sets. Everyone is living through their own checkered background from the lead actress to the returning actor to the homeless deaf/mute extra on down to the trampy nurse and the buxom doctor on the show. By default, the program’s head writer and the producer fall into this category as well.
The hilarity found in Soapdish gave me remembrances of classic films like All About Eve and Sunset Blvd. Ego and stardom are treasured commodities above all else and an actress’s greatest fear is being aged out of fandom and replaced by the new girl in town.
Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) is a star actress with dozens of career awards but an insecurity with becoming past her prime. A diva concern is that the stories written for her are not worthy of her importance to the show. David (Robert Downey Jr) is the young producer feeling the pressure to come up with something to boost the ratings before his boss, the always naturally funny Garry Marshall, replaces the program with game shows. On David’s side for her own ulterior motives is Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty) who plays the resident nurse and is ready to take the reins from Celeste and make the show her own. She’ll seductively manipulate David into getting things to work out her way.
In the meantime, Lori Craven (Elisabeth Shue) sneaks onto the set seeking an opportunity by way of Aunt Celeste. Best she can get is to portray a deaf/mute homeless woman extra. Head writer Rose (Whoopi Goldberg) has devised a new plot where Celeste’s character will be tried for murdering Lori’s homeless mute character. Lastly, at least through the first thirty minutes of the film, Jeffrey Anderson’s (Kevin Kline) character who died on the show twenty years prior by an unfortunate beheading is recruited out of dinner theater by David to return to the program. Both Lori and Jeffrey’s unexpected arrivals do not sit well with Celeste.
Following along okay, so far? Well…
SECRETS ABOUND on Soapdish!
This film was developed by the powers who delivered Steel Magnolias to the big screen a few years prior. The original playwright and screenwriter, Robert Harling, teamed up with Andrew Bergman, to satirize the weepy material that daytime drama promises and which he embraced seriously with his beloved play. The director of Magnolias, Herbert Ross, also serves as an executive producer on this film. To add some extra authentic spice, Aaron Spelling is producer. That’s right. The guy who produced Dynasty, 90210 and Melrose Place. Michael Hoffman directs.
The look of this film is so odd and has a garish blood coated red appearance to the television studio where the show within the movie is set, as well as to the offices that hover above. The set designer for the film, Eugenio Zanetti was inspired by Dante’s Inferno. Makes sense really because no one is ever satisfied with how The Sun Also Sets develops from one atrociously delicious storyline to the next, and how it makes them look in the public eye. Zanetti is quoted as saying the offices of the producers and writers hover above the set for the soap opera. So, it looks as if the powers that be are staring down into the depths of hell that the cast and crew must work and reside in. While it looks odd, after having seen the film, I can’t help but believe Zanetti makes sense.
There are moments here that are outright hilarious. As a community theater actor and director, I can totally relate to Kline’s character being stuck in a retirement community steak/playhouse performing as Willie Loman in Death Of A Salesman while elderly patrons call for their waiters. Poor Jeffrey also has to project that much louder for the old folks to hear him. This scene stands as gold on its own. A whole farcical film could be developed on this side story alone.
Soapdish does lose some of its comedic appeal before it reaches the middle of the picture when secrets are uncovered related to Celeste, Jeffrey, Lori and so on. Sally Field goes for great physical comedy that lands perfectly with the skeletons that Celeste pulls out of the closet. Kevin Kline makes for a hysterical arguing scene partner, and the craziness just gets bigger from there.
Whoopi Goldberg is also very funny as the one with common sense and brains behind her character. For once, she’s not going for the female Eddie Murphy equivalent. I’m with Rose when she vents to David about how she’s supposed to write a believable return from the dead of a character who was killed when he lost his head. Maybe a brain transplant?
Cathy Moriarty does a fine job of being the conniving seductress. She’s a full-bodied intimidator of teased, frizzy blond hair and a buxom nurse’s uniform costume against Robert Downey, Jr.’s nervous preppy producer.
There’s satisfying moments for cameos from Carrie Fisher as a casting director as well as Teri Hatcher and Costas Mandylor as bubbleheaded supporting characters. However, the best scene stealer is Garry Marshall. I don’t think a single line he’s given would be as funny if he was not providing them. He’s just got that Neil Simon kind of delivery as the studio boss. “The nurse is in the restaurant? Was there a meeting I missed?”
Other than a few F bombs, I think Soapdish works as movie the whole family could watch the next time they are snowed in or hunkering down from a blizzard or hurricane. Soap operas are designed for escape and the outrageous comedy of Michael Hoffman’s film reaches into outrageous areas that work with surprise and big laughs.
This nonpaid critic, who endures his loving wife’s adoration for General Hospital each night before bed, is at least a fan of The Sun Also Sets and Death Of A Salesman dinner theater.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 