'Queen Bees' review:  Stellar cast, modest comedy

In Michael Lembeck’s "Queen Bees," an elderly woman named Helen moves to a retirement home only to find that it’s a lot like high school. There are nerds, weirdos, cute guys, at least one hot teacher and — wouldn’t you know it — a group of females who rule their roost with talons at the ready.

"They’re like ‘Mean Girls,’" Helen tells her grandson, "with medical alert bracelets!"

That chuckle-worthy line is a little too on-the-nose — surely it was an elevator pitch — but it lands reasonably well because it’s delivered by a top-notch actor, Ellen Burstyn. The same could be said of the movie overall. The writing and directing are highly uneven, but "Queen Bees" is made generally watchable by a veritable Who’s Who of vintage talent.

Burstyn’s Helen is an Everygrandma: Sharp and imperious one minute, doting the next. She is ice-cold to her daughter, Laura (Elizabeth Mitchell), a realtor whom she suspects of trying to sell her house out from under her, but gushes over her college-age grandson, Peter (Matthew Barnes). When a fire forces Helen to move out, Laura and Peter talk her into a one-month stay at Pine Grove, the local senior center.

Though shockingly rude at first, the women of the film’s title aren’t all that bad. Sally (Loretta Devine) is really quite warm and lovely, while Margot (Ann-Margret) is an overgrown teenager who just wants to gossip about boys and share details of her very active sex life. (Christopher Lloyd plays one of her beaus.) The only true curmudgeon is Janet, played by an impressive Jane Curtin ("Saturday Night Live"). Forgotten by her own family, Janet has become bitter, hostile and terrified of death; Curtin plays this rather darkly shaded character so well that you may become more interested in her than in Helen.

Sad to say, the film’s weakest link is James Caan as Dan, a handsome fellow who begins wooing Helen aggressively. Caan, 81, has excelled at playing rough-edged, cocky, unpredictable men in movies like "The Gambler," "The Godfather" and "Thief," and it would have been fun to see one of them try to put the moves on a tough customer like Helen. Instead, Caan plays Dan as bland, harmless, almost dewy-eyed. Some of the blame goes to Donald Martin’s screenplay, which stints on the character, and some goes to Lembeck’s directing, which occasionally seems to evaporate mid-scene.

All told, "Queen Bees" offers some gentle laughs and several welcome faces, even if it won’t quicken any pulses.