Word: soapdish
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...gifted farceurs and mimics. The farceurs displayed their oversize personalities on TV, then did more of the same in Hollywood. John Candy, for instance, plays the jolly lug, coping with crisis by wearing it down. In his O.K. new movie Delirious -- the season's second daytime-drama parody, after Soapdish -- he is a soap-opera writer who is knocked silly and dreams that he is a prisoner in his own show. The premise is frail, but Candy gives it his usual shrug-it-off assurance. No big deal. No problem...
...SOAPDISH...
...Robert Harling-Andrew Bergman script, loopy life contrives to imitate trashy art with marvelous fidelity. There are moments when the plot of The Sun Also Sets seems marginally more realistic -- or anyway more temperate -- than the lives of its performers. For Soapdish is something the movies rarely attempt: a flat-out farce, all slamming doors, thrown objects, misplaced emotions and terrific timing by a wonderful ensemble of actors. Field has an unsuspected gift for comic malevolence, and Kline has a way of putting a soft, almost endearing spin on egomania. No one has ever acted bad acting better than these...
Show biz may be full of nut cases, but it has this saving grace: an ability to pull itself up short, take a hard look in the mirror and bust out laughing. When the danger of inside jokiness is avoided, the result can be Tootsie or Noises Off. Or Soapdish...
...Kurt Russell and Robert De Niro. Maybe those two films will duke it out all summer. Or maybe they will cream each other and leave space for late May's gal-buddy movie, Thelma and Louise, with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. The success of T&L, or of Soapdish with Sally Field and Whoopi Goldberg, or of Warshawski with Kathleen Turner would mark the welcome infiltration of female-star vehicles in the boys' camp of summer movies...