Review of Queen of the Stardust Ballroom

Maureen Stapleton plays a middle-aged widow in the Bronx who gets invited out for an evening with the girls to a local ballroom for elderly hoofers; there, she meets portly, starry-eyed Charles Durning, whose adoration makes her feel good about herself for the first time since her husband was alive. Acclaimed TV-movie approaches some interesting subjects (a sister's jealousy, an overprotective daughter's anger, a romance blooming in the autumn of a woman's years), and yet the plastic coating over this production is so thick that little of it rings true. The ballroom itself, filled to capacity with wily men eager to get out there and strut there stuff, may be a metaphor for the lives of its graying dancers--Last Chance For Happiness--but the collection of colorful characters Stapleton meets there are a romanticized group. Writer Jerome Kass even throws in the gambit of sung lyrics used as innermost thoughts, when what his teleplay really needs is some casual, natural interaction (there's really only one sequence which achieves this, a scene between Stapleton and son Michael Brandon doing the dishes). Although the people are phonied-up, the performances are generally likable, particularly Durning's. But who can take that ending seriously? Not after 90 minutes of sonnets, soliloquies and stardust!