AllMovie

Released in the mid-'80s, just as eating disorders were taking their place at the center of talk-show and water-cooler discourse, Kate's Secret provided a sympathetic portrayal of a bulimic by casting beloved sitcom star Meredith Baxter in the lead role. Meticulous but low-key, the actress was the perfect choice for portraying the victim of a titillating disease without turning the proceedings into a freakshow. The film works best in its early scenes, which delineate the pressures of the protagonist's privileged middle-class life and reveal the methodology of Kate's disease. Conspiracy-theory camera angles and cheap, yet effective audio cues help the filmmakers portray bulimic episodes as a sort of altered reality not so very different from a psychedelic drug trip. Scenes of Kate engaging in frenzied pastry-scarfing and endless trips to burger and pizza joints effectively portray the nasty particulars of the disease even as they verge on campy voyeurism. The film lapses into self-help truisms, however, when it shifts to its hospital scenes. Edward Asner's cocky shrink would probably be sued for invasion of privacy in real life, and on the basis of his half-baked Freudian analysis, he'd no doubt get slapped with a malpractice suit, too. By explaining away a complex mental and physical disorder with pat little clichés about troubled childhoods, Kate's Secret does the victims of its subject no favors. Still, the cast of malcontents who make up the hospital's eating disorder ward -- including real-life substance abuser Mackenzie Phillips -- get a few good scenes to play. If you can stomach the main character's final breakdown ("Now you really are invisible, Patch!"), Kate's Secret is a better-than-average TV movie that gives serious treatment to a subject that's more often, as in Heathers, the butt of vicious jokes.