Bette Midler plays a Janis Joplin-like singer overwhelmed by stardom and its excesses. Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond) directs what is a kind of hybrid showcase for Midler"s concert talents and a standard pop biopic, with the usual rhythms of desire, success, betrayal, failure, and such. Alan Bates is the best thing about the movie as the Rose"s ruthless manager, and Harry Dean Stanton and Frederic Forrest add some interesting seasoning. But as a whole, the film can"t rise above its mixed purposes or clichés. --Tom Keogh