The Evening Star is a belated sequel to Terms Of Endearment, James L. Brooks' sharp-eyed family comedy drama from 1983. Adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel by debuting director Robert Harling, who wrote Steel Magnolias, Soapdish and the recent First Wives Club, this renewed visit with Aurora Greenway (played once again by Shirley MacLaine) is a resolutely dispiriting affair. The premise here revolves around Aurora's determination to keep a promise she made to her late daughter to keep a maternal eye on her three grandchildren. It's a task easier said than done when your charges turn out to be a trio of ne'er-do-wells displaying symptoms of delinquency. With Debra Winger on view only in fleeting bedside portraits (she died in the original film), and in the absence of a Disease of the Week subplot to help kick the emotion barometer into high gear, MacLaine is no longer the fiesty old gal of yore thanks to a script that leaves her dramatically moribund and at the mercy of an uninspired procession of soap opera cliches which even Jack Nicholson's all too brief cameo cannot salvage. Ho-hum.
