Four years earlier she was An Unmarried Woman, now Jill Clayburgh returns to the screen in another oddly familiar role that would become synonymous with her career, as a woman struggling with the perils of modern life.

Here Clayburgh plays real-life TV producer Barbara Gordon, who was also a Valium addict. A spur of the moment decision leads her to quit, and after jitters and siezures she finally ends up near death, drying out in a rehab clinic. (If nothing else, Dancing enumerates exactly how awful Valium withdrawal can be -- as bad as heroin, so the film says.)

Made today, this would be movie of the week material, but through the jaded 1980s eyes of Jack Hofsiss it becomes a cautionary tale about drugs and a platform for Clayburgh's acting. Unfortunately for her that platform consists of little more than screaming and flailing about on the beach. It's a one note performance in a one note film -- but oddly it's a kind of time capsule for the way drug movies were made in te early 1980s, an era of Just Say No and Zero Tolerance and the glorification of the coked-out Hollywood executive. Though this is purportedly the flip side of that glory, there's still more than a little barely veiled hero worship here.

Take it or leave it, I guess.