SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

gpaltrow2001 People have complained about how bad this is. They are right. People have noted how much they enjoyed it. They are right, too. Remember how bad the book and the movie 'Valley of the Dolls' were? Well, here ya go-- It's all in the same vein. They are obviously being over the top, campy, kitschy... If you are looking for Scorcese, this ain't it. But cheesy fun this IS! Unfortunately, because they felt they HAD to make it campy, the 'dramedy' doesn't work. So it goes between melodramatic and wiseacre, with neither hitting the mark. I have to say I enjoyed the movie the same way I would enjoy 'Mommie Dearest' or 'Showgirls'. Just mindless, guilty time-wasting. I'm also a sucker for period pieces when they get it right. The clothing, the celebrities, the zeitgeist of the time are pretty good. I'll take Bette Midler chewing the scenery in this over her deplorable 'Beaches' character any day!

happipuppi13 Picture a man walking up to his local movie theatre and there just really is nothing playing that interests him. After scanning the titles available that day I chose this film. I had heard it was about Jacqueline Sussan,who wrote "Valley Of The Dolls",that it takes place in the '60s and it stars Bette Midler & Nathan Lane. Who could go wrong with that?The answer after sitting through this...just about anybody! First off,movie titles that ask a question are lame and open all involved to answers (and reviewer title) they may not want. All the standard things are there for a movie about another era and the people of it's time but the acting/reacting on Midler & Lane and others seems about as lively as a Sunday afternoon without a car to drive someplace too!If this was meant to be a biopic,it told the unvarnished story of her exploits but somehow (unlike say..."Ray") they're not surprising or shocking or even very interesting. I kid you not when i say that,literally,by the time I got home the only part of the film I could remember was when they turned "Valley Of The Dolls" into a movie.Maybe I did because,even that laughable 60's flick is a lot more entertaining than this pedestrian in a deserted city street outing. One star,for a film with many stars but,given the results...you'd never know it! (END)

george.schmidt ISN'T SHE GREAT (2000) ** Bette Midler, Nathan Lane, Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce, John Cleese, Amanda Peet. Before there was Jackie Collins and Amazon.com there was Jacqueline Susann. That is prior to the subgenre of 'trashy romance' novels found in your neighborhood pharmacy and the glut that is now the conglomerate superbookstore –i.e. marketing and focus groups for the masses! – there was Jacqueline Susann, whose bawdy, vulgar and tasteless novels were ultimately candy for the average American reader who gobbled her tomes faster than she could churn them out. In Andrew Bergman's look at the queen of the acquired taste, who else could portray a larger than life figurehead than the estimable Divine Miss M herself, Bette Midler.Midler gives it her all with her trademark ball-breaking brio as the celebrity craven author whose indefatigable image fashioning was only matched by par by her long-suffering but ever devoted husband and business partner Irving Mansfield (touché Lane, making their onscreen presence a once in a lifetime pairing to appreciative audiences), who used all his show biz savvy – no matter how gauche or seemingly stooping manners of barnstorming the country to every podunk backwater stationery store or spreading the word to a busload of school children – to make Susann a giantess among the mortals in the writing field. Based on a reminiscence by New Yorker's Michael Korda, the fact that the real Susann was no sweetheart and a real tough cookie with a few sad hurdles – her ongoing bout with cancer and the institutionalization of her only child who suffered from autism – are casually sugar-coated by Bergman (whose impeccable credits include a plethora of the comic pantheon including 'The In-Laws', 'The Freshman' and 'Blazing Saddles') and the sharply sticky screenplay by scathing scribe Paul Rudnick ('In & Out') wisely overlook her obvious flaws and instead center on the unlikely union of two borderline caricatures of the entertainment field, and their questionable romance. But Midler and Lane surpass the film's shortcomings with their theatrical overplaying, which is arguably suitable, as well as the always welcome Channing, one of our most underrated comic actresses, whose succor in her line readings are a stitch (when Susann belabors she doesn't know how to write a book, Channing says with aplomb, 'Talent isn't everything.'); she's like the salt in a margarita.Also lending able support is Hyde Pierce in another variation of his tv persona from 'Frasier' as Susann's stuffed shirt editor and Cleese as the Nehru jacketed publisher, both in their element here. The one thing that seems to be missing is it seems outdated and quite a lot to compress in a film that has the dubious distinction of telling the story of a woman who wasn't very nice nor well respected, but then again that hasn't been the case of celebrity history in this country, so I'm not even going to argue that!

kluivertfan2 It was really bad 1 out of 10. It would have been worse, but Nathan lanes voice saves it from complete horridness. He is funny in everything he does, but he just cant save this truly bad piece of film. Bette Midler definitely needs to rethink her latest acting moves. And also to stay out of TV