The Room Upstairs –– directed by Stuart Margolin –– Hallmark Hall Of Fame comedy-drama in which a school teacher decides to start a boardinghouse in her family home –– 79 minutes color 1987.
*
Oi-vey. The most talented actors in America are subject to a badly written script whose lies are generally given to Stockard Channing and Linda Hunt to deliver –– in the phony relations of Channing to “getting through to” the dreadful teenagers Hunt’s agency cares for. Sam Waterston cleverly holds his own in this story, but neither he nor anyone else has the lines to justify our interest or respect. No actor, no matter how good, can survive such tripe proudly. However, one actor does fare well –– and, of course, it is the extraordinary Joan Allen, playing an Irish wife to a philandering bum. Her playing here, as it so often is elsewhere, is riveting. How she does it I don’t know, and maybe she doesn’t either, but boy is she worth watching. If you’re a Joan Allen fan, send for it. In her, at least, you will not be disappointed.
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