However much this movie owes to the particulars of Janis Joplin's life, it surely owes more to the generalities of the musical-biography genre. These are given such a convincing documentary veneer that you don't really mind such stuff and nonsense as the romance with the AWOL soldier, the lesbian relationship with an Avon Lady type, the heroin-injection and ensuing dramatic monolog in a phone booth, and the final, fatal homecoming concert -- one big swan song and a swan dive. Bette Midler, as the Joplinesque belter of song and booze, has a ravishing stage manner, as well as a collection of personal traits that give her a slob appeal hardly approached by Gloria Grahame or Jan Sterling or Shelley Winters or any other actress outside of an Andy Warhol movie: the hook nose, the jutting teeth, the unshaven underarms, the runny nose and melting mascara, the foul mouth, the creaky-croaky sympathy-begging voice, and the Erskine Caldwell-ish tale of tackling (so to speak) the entire high school football team late one night on the fifty-yard line. With Alan Bates and Frederic Forrest; directed by Mark Rydell. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd