In this two-hour introduction to the world of ballet, Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft play women who each chose one of the paths that was open in the 1950s to talented female dancers: dedicate yourself completely to the dance, or get married and get out. MacLaine chose marriage, in part because she wasn't certain she was good enough to dance professionally, and Bancroft chose dance, because she was just driven enough to do it. Both women, twenty years later, regret their choices, at least a little. This film received an amazing 11 Oscar nominations—amazing because it isn't all that good. It's a tad silly, a tad hokey, and more than a tad pedantic. It deserved all the Oscars it won: none.

MacLaine plays Deedee Rogers, the mother of three children and the wife of Wayne (Tom Skerritt), who was also a great dancer in his day. The two of them married young, had children, and now teach ballet to ungainly kids in Oklahoma, about as geographically far away from ballet culture as you can get. They seem happy, but there's a sadness in Deedee that is visible any time she sees her children dance. Her eldest daughter Emilia (Leslie Browne) is a talented dancer, talented enough to perhaps make a go as a professional. When the American Ballet Company, where Deedee and Wayne started out, comes to town on a tour, they run into their old friends and nemeses. There's Martha Scott, who plays the cantankerous and plainspoken founder of the company. There's James Mitchell, who plays the sensitive choreographer whom Deeded perhaps had a thing for. And there's Emma (Bancroft), the prima ballerina past her prime, with whom Deedee competed for a coveted role—competition that led directly to Deedee's leaving the company. When Emilia is invited to come to New York and join the prestigious company, Deedee accompanies her, setting the stage for a big emotional dredging.

There are subplots to fill in the space between dancing and arguing. Emilia falls for the bedroom-eyed Russian dancer Yuri, played by the World's Greatest Male Ballerina, Mikhail Baryshnikov ("Hotness! Hotness!" whispered my viewing companion), who lacks an appreciation for things like commitment. MacLaine runs into an old flame (Anthony Zerbe), leading to conflict with Emilia, whose Electra complex is running in high gear. Finally, Emma is also having problems with the brash and flamboyant young choreographer (Daniel Levans).

Since this is a movie about ballet, I should talk about the dancing. It's not all that impressive. Director Herbert Ross seldom takes the camera on-stage, happy instead to leave the camera, and the viewer, in a decent seat in the audience. The dancers look small and insignificant most of the time. It isn't nearly as interesting or involving as the dance sequences in Robert Altman's recent The Company, which took you right into a dance. The highlight of the dance sequences is Mikhail Baryshnikov, three years after his celebrated defection from the Soviet Union, who bounds and leaps impressively, as if he isn't affected by things like gravity and weight. For dance fans, it might make the movie worth watching. It's not nearly enough for most viewers.

There were parts of the film that actively annoyed me. During the climactic ballet scene, we are treated to close-ups of MacLaine accompanied by a pointless and pedantic voiceover as she fills us in on all her thoughts about her life—thoughts we already knew about, and didn't need to hear again. Didn't the filmmakers trust that viewers would understand anything intuitively? Apparently not, because there's no space in the film for such understanding. Everything is spelled out with overbearing dialog. After what is supposed to be a climactic blowup between MacLaine and Bancroft, which ends in a rather silly catfight, MacLaine is actually required to utter the line "That jealousy—it's poison." Oh really? Thanks for filling us in.

And yet I can't say that I hated the film. It had such an active need to be liked, and it was sometimes so enthusiastic about filling us in on the backstage workings of a ballet company, that I found myself liking parts of it. It helps that Bancroft and MacLaine are good despite some of the things required of them. Baryshnikov's dancing was the other highlight.

The film was nominated for 11 Oscars but failed to win any: Picture, Director, Actress nominations for both MacLaine and Bancroft, Supporting Actress for Browne (really undeserved), Supporting Actor for Baryshnikov (again undeserved), Original Screenplay (what?!), Cinematography, Art Direction/Set Decoration, Sound (again undeserved—the sound was just really weird), and Editing (which was abrupt and choppy). It is tied with The Color Purple for having the most nominations without a win. This was the year of Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which didn't get Best Picture nominations. This movie lags far behind those films, Annie Hall, and Star Wars on the "best-of" list for 1977.