The Evening Star

Fifteen years after the death of her daughter (and 14 years after Terms of Endearment), the sun's setting on Aurora Greenway (MacLaine). She's fighting with her grandchildren, feuding with her neighbour Patsy (Richardson) and succumbing to a shrink with a mother complex (Paxton). While Lewis is convincingly cast as Debra Winger's daughter, and you can always look to Richardson for poised bitchery, writer/director Harling ensures that everyone is but further grist to Aurora's already monstrous ego: even the ubiquitous Jack Nicholson pops in to pay tribute. This isn't so much a movie as a memorial service. MacLaine, though, is still very much alive and kicking, more than able to take a scene by the scruff of the neck. If there's no edge, at least there's a centre. Harling is best known for his play Steel Magnolias, and he also had a hand in the scripts for Soapdish and First Wives Club, so it's no surprise that the film's female characters have more going on than their feckless partners, but this adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel irons out depth without tightening up a baggy shapeless narrative.