JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

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

rcusickjr This is a real delight! Excellent writing and acting in a story about how VALLEY OF THE DOLLS was really written.An excellent underrated film. Read the book first for maximum effect.The great cast includes:Bette Midler Nathan Lane David Hyde Pierce Amanda Peet Stockard Channing Central Park and NYC :-)Jacqueline Susann had more character than a dozen of today's popular novelists.She was ignored by the critics because she wrote the truth.Enjoy this great film bio of a misunderstood genius.If you ever see the first edition of VALLEY OF THE DOLLS in a used bookstore for a cheap price, snap it up.R.C. Chicago

riccascio Oh my God, I've always loved Bette, but not so fond of Nathan Lane. He always sounds constipated. But Bette here is more disastrous than anything I have ever seen her in. Terrible acting, I wouldn't even call it over-acting, it was just plain tragic. Nothing believable about anything here. The most pathetic, however, is Stockard Channing, one of the finest actresses around. How in God's name could any of these actors not seen what a laughable mess this was? They must have been in dire positions financially to stoop this low. I will never watch another Bette film. She should stick to cleaning up New York City. Never liked her as a singer either. She is just overwrought and bad. Like a bad drag queen from the 70s, which is I guess what she modeled her career after anyway. Sad.

jillmuscat Middle-aged women of the world unite -- and watch this movie! The real-life story of Jackie Susann's meteoric and incredibly unlikely rise to fame is much more compelling than any of the sexploitation novels she wrote.Well into her 40s, Susann had three dreadful strikes against her -- her only child was autistic and institutionalized, her acting career had flopped and then she got cancer. She had ground out a novel about the sex-and-drugs peccadilloes of showbiz types, which was considered junk by any and all established literary standards. But Jackie had a shrewd, intuitive sense of what turned ordinary people on, a flamboyant flair for promoting herself plus relentless energy and ambition. She achieved about a decade of glorious success as top best-selling author until she succumbed to a recurrence of cancer in her 50s.If you like this story line, you'll probably like the movie. It's handled in a high-camp manner, with very broad performances by Bette Midler and the rest. Midler and Lane, who plays her kindly and rather pathetic hanger-on of a husband, are wonderfully funny playing a couple with absolutely no class at all. If you were a kid in the 1960s, as I was, you'll probably enjoy Bette wafting around in outrageous outfits and dos.My only criticism is that this very comic style makes the movie play like an extended, patched-together sequence of comedy sketches, rather than a movie. Also, to enjoy the movie, I think it helps if you're a New Yorker. In NYC, eccentricity has traditionally been not just tolerated but encouraged. Many people from other more staid parts of the country come to New York for this reason -- Susann herself was a New York transplant from Philadelphia. Also, NYC attracts lots of wildly ambitious people vying to make it in the worlds of showbiz, the arts, publishing, finance, etc. So,as goofy as Midler's portrait is, it seemed endearingly familiar to me.

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