This is a romantic comedy with the emphasis on comedy for a change. As usual the lovers--Sally Field as almost-over-the-hill soap opera queen, Celeste Talbert; and Kevin Kline as marginally employed and marginally talented actor, Jeffrey Anderson--are working at cross purposes, seemingly unaware that they are madly in love, etc. Owing a little to Bette Davis's Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) and a whole lot to the slapstick theatrical tradition, Sally Field goes over the top towards hilarity as she malaprops her way to love and happiness. Kevin Kline, one of the more underrated leading men of recent years, is also very good and very winning as he manages to be handsome, vulnerable, egotistical and lovable all at the same time.
The misadventures center around Celeste's fear of losing her audience as she has entered her forties, and reach the crisis point with the arrival of her niece, aspiring actress Cori Craven (Elisabeth Shue) who turns out NOT to be her niece, with ensuing plot complications. Cori manages to get a small part in the soap opera as a homeless deaf mute before discovering her true relationship to Celeste (and to Jeffrey Anderson as well)--but never mind.
As a romantic counterpoint or foil to the leads are Robert Downey Jr. (soap opera director, David Barnes) and Cathy Moriarty (Montana and Nurse Nan). David Barnes is oh so hot for her, but she cares only about one thing: getting rid of Celeste so that she might shine more brightly on the set. To this end she gets Barnes to do all sorts of things to wreck Celeste's career, but through happenstance and/or a perverse logic, all his attempts go awry, much to the delight of the viewer.
Whoopie Goldberg plays Rose Schwartz, the show's chief writer and Celeste's alter-ego and confidant while Carrie Fisher has a modest part as the hard-as-nails producer of the show.
I thought this was funnier than the only other spoof of the soap opera world that I have seen (Young Doctors in Love 1982 which burlesqued TV's General Hospital and was pretty good). Soapdish is funnier with a daffy script and plenty of laugh-out-loud one-liners and terrific performances by Field, Kline and Downy, Jr. But see this for Sally Field who is outstanding.

As a fan of Notorious B.I.G., I was looking forward to this movie. I am unfortunate to see it is a terrible movie. Jamal Woodward is not convincing or realistic enough to portray Notorious B.I.G. A lot of the story follows Notorious B.I.G.'s real son, Christopher Jordan Wallace as Notorious B.I.G. as a kid. Unfortunately, he is not convincing enough to pay tribute to his father. Derek Luke is just as unconvincing as Sean "Puffy" Combs. In a nutshell, no one is convincing enough to play their roles here. The big problem with this are these are actual people they are playing. It was boring, and did not give any information about Notorious B.I.G. that fans and non-fans alike did not already know. I was especially disappointed with Angela Bassett, a very good actress wasted here as Voletta Wallace. The movie slugs and slugs along thinking that Notorious B.I.G. fans will spend tons of money on it. I am unfortunate to say that that happened. It's nowhere close to a good movie. I was expecting so much out of it, but unfortunately I didn't get anything I wanted from this. I think you should definitely skip this one.