Word: midler
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...Rose--Even if Bette Midler, former queen of New York's Roman baths and reigning queen of bawdy rock and roll doesn't get an Oscar for her performance as a Janis Joplin clone rock star of the '60s, this movie will still rake in the big dough. Why? Because despite some wooden acting by the supporting cast, The Rose has got lots of "sex, drugs and rock and roll." It also has Midler, who, despite the movie's flat finish, is phenomenal in her Hollywood debut...
JANIS JOPLIN would have detested The Rose. Starring Bette Midler, this thinly-disguised biography chronicles the epic self-destruction of Rose, a white woman from the south, singin' the blues. Director Mark Rydell clearly knows how to hack at the heartstrings; the very first shot of the film identifies Rose, i.e. Janis "pearl" Joplin, with the other self-destructive heroes of our culture, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. As the biography of a real woman, The Rose reveals nothing. It takes a marvelously idiosyncratic human being and reduces her to a cliche...
...woman, and enjoy its insights into the cosmos of a "star." The Rose works splendidly when it treats Rose as a singing phenomenon transcending human limits and fails abysmally when it portrays her as a lonely woman with all of Joplin's reputed problems. As a star on stage, Midler becomes a voice and a presence. In the striking concert scenes, she projects an astounding vitality and animal-like ferocity, savaging both herself and the audience. Her voice lacks the razor-edged poignancy or raw power of Joplin's but has a vibrancy all its own. Fortunately, Midler avoids impersonating...
WHEN THE FILM refrains from digging up dead dirt on a dead woman and concentrates on creating the live persona of Rose, things improve. The entire sequence with Frederic Forrest as an AWOL Army sergeant is enchanting; Midler's gifts as both a comic and serious actress shine as she creates an original character rather than rehashing old rumors about Joplin...
...film's most effective episodes, Midler draws upon her own experience as an aspiring singer in New York City's gay bars and baths. The rendition of Seger's "The Fire Down Below" with a group of oversized female impersonators shows a rare tolerance and warmth, the same elements so lacking in the lesbian scene...