Tinny 'Magnolias' rings By JEFF SIMON News Critic REVIEW S and ALLY Shirley Olympia FIELD, MacLaine, Dukakis DOLLY Darryl in Hannah Parton, that order. That's the billing in "Steel Magnolias," and it is far and away the most interesting thing about the movie. They should have filmed the wrangling of the stars and agents and producers over that and mulched the rest. That such a cum-laude sorority of American actresses could come together for a film of such stunning awfulness is almost miraculous. Let's make this clear as soon as possible it's not their fault. It's especially not the fault of MacLaine, Field and Dukakis, who give this junk all of their professional and womanly wiles. (MacLaine, especially, is a perverse pleasure every time she's on screen.) It's an adaptation of Robert Harling's huge theatrical success about a sisterhood of loving, squabbling Southern women - some of them belles (Field, Julia Roberts and Parton sort of), some of them - former belles (Dukakis) and some not-so- on laughs REVIEW Steel Magnolias A small-town sorority of Southern women deals with life and tragedy. Starring, clockwise from top left, Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Darryl Hannah, Julia Roberts, Olympia Dukakis and Shirley MacLaine. Directed by Herbert Ross. Rated PG, opening Friday in the Holiday, Boulevard and Seneca Mall theaters. the opposite sex. Writers of varying abilities do it all the time. It's in the very nature of the creative imagination. But when the best they can do is inhabit locker rooms and hair parlors - and express stunningly unfelt sympathy all the way around - they've understood nothing at all about what makes each sex what it is. The result is something grotesque and misshapen. "Steel Magnolias" is the female equivalent of "Rambo." Yes, it's true people laugh at this, but, at long last, I think I've figured that one out. Harling's lines and situations (Dad, for instance, shoots birds out of the yard on his daughter's wedding day) have the rhythms of things that ought to be funny. He knows we're out here in the audience breathing and rattling candy wrappers and hoping he'll come up with something. He tries. Does he ever. The very fact of Harling's clear recognition of the audience's existence is enough to make some people laugh. They're so pleased to be taken into account that they're enjoying themselves. When they the laugh, familiarity they're of it all, rewarding the effort and not quality. (After all, that's Shirley MacLaine up there. She wouldn't be using all her majestic talent in something unfunny, would she?) Now comes the big bugaboo here. "Witty" lines as tinny as this have to be from television - - right? When in doubt, blame TV. That's the critical cant. (It's usually right, too.) Uh-uh. Some of this is so bad that it makes even ordinary TV sitcoms look belle (Shirley MacLaine, in the film's most delightful role). Harling locates much of the action in a hair parlor, where the small town's frailties and follies are savagely dished for the amusement of the principals and the techniques of hairdressing are discussed at length. In literary terms, what Harling is doing here is a form of female impersonation, and an ungainly one at that. It isn't that writers of both sexes don't routinely inhabit the skins and minds of See 'Magnolias' Page • C12