Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

the first feeling after so many time. for a form of simplicity and honesty. for naive situations and childish solutions. for the atmosphere of soap opera , the old fashion atmosphere , who are windows to exotic life style, to familiar dramas, to the fights and passions and love and hate and desire and family life with ordinaries crisis. "SSanta Barbara" remains a phenomenon. sure, for a slide of public. but significant for the taste of a period and the way to escape from every day life. and this is a precious virtue.

What was it about "Santa Barbara" that managed to get dedicated non-Soapists like me hooked? Humour, in a word. SB is the only soap I'm aware of that had an all-the-way-thru' sense of humour about itself. I discovered this , as so many do, while surfing the channels. Up came an incident in SB when a lawyer character is seen in a coma. He fantasises himself into an all-white version of his lawyer's office (i.e. Heaven) where he is seen arriving bedecked in white from head to toe. His first stop is his secretary's desk. "She", also a vision in white, is not his real secretary but one of SB's male characters who is also a transvestite. He/she is seated at his/her desk, filing his/her nails AND--here is the piece of resistance that made SB irresistable to me--watching the opening credits of his/her favourite soap on the office TV. The favourite soap being--what else?--"Santa Barbara! A nice little touch of post-modernism there, I think.Then there was the murder of the lounge singer by the local District Attorney and her husband.(A very Santa Barbara reversal of the usual plotline!) They hide the body in a freezer which provides a superb full- face picture of the corpse for the closing credits. The make-up artist has done a superb job, ice crystals mixing with mascara and blusher to achieve that all-over "dead" effect. AND, forgoing the Santa Barbara theme music, the episode ends with the dear departed lounge singer's own voice singing the highly appropriate "AM I BLUE?"!!!From then on I was hooked. Humour and a wonderfully anarchic script that had characters trapped in dungeons at the beginning of an episode and attending a" black tie 'n' frocks party" at the end, are what made Santa Barbara a soap like no other. And I daresay we shall not see its like ever again.

I was little boy when the war in my country started. i remember what one soldier on TV said: I do not know what will last longer this war or Santa Barbara. (santa barbara lasted longer)when i remember those days i almost cry for my childhood and Santa Barbara. I remmember day when we had no electric power so we went few miles to the house with power to watch this show.Great show, but not to watch it again.ps. my neighbours pray God in church for Eden and A. Martinez

If it wasn't for a chance meeting with a college roommate and his family on a Thanksgiving weekend in 1987, I probably wouldn't have paid too much attention to "Santa Barbara". I usually would've stayed with "General Hospital" or "Guiding Light" which was in the same time slot as SB.What made SB slightly better than other daytime (and some nighttime) shows was that the show was able to balance between comedy and drama effortlessly. When it was funny, the dialog was biting and when it was dramatic, it was heartbreaking. It kept me interested in what was going to happen to these characters. I was also impressed with the actors on the show. I started watching the show about 1987 after a number of cast members, including Robin Wright, left the show. As Cruz Castillo and Eden Capwell, the chemistry between A Martinez and Marcy Walker steamed up the TV screen. Prior to SB, Martinez seemed to always play the stereotypical Hispanic villain in many 1970s TV crime dramas. It was very nice to see Martinez playing a romantic lead. Eden and Cruz were not the only one that had great chemistry. There was Mason Capwell & Julia Wainwright (Lane Davies and Nancy Lee Grahn. Arguably, I thought Gordon Thompson did a good job playing as Mason as well.) also CC Capwell and Sophia Wayne (Jed Allen and Judith McConnell). There were characters on the show that were way over-the-top like Gina Blake (Robin Mattson) and Augusta Lockridge (Louise Sorel). But it didn't matter that they were over-the-top. They were lively, unpredictable and interesting people.With the number of daytime viewers dropping and fewer dramas in production right now, I don't know if there will ever be a more entertaining daytime drama like "Santa Barbara". As another user mentioned before, it certainly was ahead of it's time.