Soapdish (1991)

Film: Soapdish (1991)

Stars: Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey, Jr., Cathy Moriarty, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Shue, Teri Hatcher, Carrie Fisher

Director: Michael Hoffman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sally Field: click here to learn more about Ms. Field (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Despite the mammoth success of Steel Magnolias, it was Field's costar Julia Roberts who got the biggest boost coming out of the film (and the cast's only Oscar nomination), and not Field, who would have a bumpy turn in the 1990's.  Though she'd have some leading work (including today's "camp classic" Soapdish), she'd largely spend the coming decade getting increasingly throwaway parts.  Whereas she was once playing Tom Hanks' love interest in Punchline, she was now playing his mother in Forrest Gump.  Indeed, her biggest movies in the 1990's were either playing second banana to male leads with better parts (Forrest Gump, Mrs. Doubtfire) or having to make way for younger actresses as a supporting role (Where the Heart Is, Legally Blonde 2).  You can see a little bit as to why in Soapdish, a film where Field is giving it her all, but the script only cares about her age.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a sendup of the soap opera craze which had dominated the 1980's (it's hard to comprehend now, but at one point everyone in America knew who the main characters on most daytime soap operas were).  Field plays Celeste Talbert, a Susan Lucci-style figure who wins awards, but is deeply unhappy in her personal life, in the opening scenes getting dumped by her married boyfriend.  We also meet David Barnes (Downey), the show's producer, who is sexually obsessed with Montana Moorehead (Moriarty), a young supporting player on the show who won't sleep with him until he makes her the star of the show (and gets rid of Celeste).  This culminates in a series of ruses that just continue to make Celeste more popular, including making her a murderer on the show, bringing back her offscreen/onscreen lover Jeffrey Anderson (Kline), and having her admit that Lori (Shue), a new hire on the show, is actually her real-life daughter.  The movie ends with Lori, David, & Celeste becoming a family on-and-off the camera, and Montana being outed as a transgender woman, and thus becoming unemployable in this universe, as revenge for trying to sabotage Celeste.

The movie's ending has gained a lot of critiques in recent years, and while it's probably not much better than anything else you'd watch from this era in terms of transgender representation (the surprise gender reveal is literally the same stunt pulled in Tootsie, albeit in that movie the character isn't actually transgender, and of course the audience is in on the reveal), but it reads as pretty dated and almost certainly wouldn't be how they'd end the movie today.  

The film is beloved otherwise, though, by gay male audiences who lap up the campiness & humor, which is admittedly quotable, and the actress-heavy cast (I didn't even mention Whoopi Goldberg, Teri Hatcher, Kathy Najimy, & Carrie Fisher are also in the picture).  The movie wasn't a big hit when it was released, and watching it now I kind of see why.  I wanted something more than what we were getting here-it's funny, but given the call sheet it should be funnier.  The jokes should pop more, and it doesn't feel like they're using some of the supporting cast (specifically Downey, Fisher, & Hatcher, all ace comic actors when given the chance) to the fullest extent they could.  Field's role is also a bit "ehh" and underwritten.  She is written as someone who is both angry about being treated as old, and yet spends much of the movie trying to give away her career.  It's as if the audience, even though Field is in her mid-40's and therefore at least a decade away from normal retirement age for a woman in 1991, is being told that the only thing that a woman after 40 can care about is her daughter & making the world better for her, rather than Celeste's own (impressive) career.  Thankfully it doesn't end on that sentiment (Celeste stays on the show), but this is a good reflection of how Hollywood executives seemed to think of Field in the 1990's.

Thankfully she would rebound from this, getting a late-career part as Nora Walker in Brothers & Sisters, a role that would win her an Emmy, and focus on a mother-of-five who decides to get out of her late husband's shadow after she finds out he cheated on her.  She'd start to get the respect she deserved in the 2010's, including a third Oscar nomination (for 2012's Lincoln), a Kennedy Center Honor in 2019, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2023.