`STAR' SHINES BRIGHTER THAN EVER : THE FACTS.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

You needn't have seen the 1984 Best Picture Oscar winner ``Terms of Endearment'' to appreciate ``The Evening Star,'' which stands on its own as one of the richer and more enjoyable human comedies of the season.

Whatever trepidation Shirley MacLaine may have had about reprising the role for which she won an Oscar is unfounded; if anything, she burns brighter this time out in a movie that puts more of the focus on her character.

A quick photo montage reminds us of the first outing, in which Debra Winger played a young woman struggling to raise a family while being hounded by her overbearing mother, Aurora Greenway (MacLaine).

Winger died at the end of that movie, leaving her three young children motherless.

As ``The Evening Star'' commences 15 years later, it's clear that Aurora has raised her grandchildren herself, and the results have been none too encouraging.

Poster children for the ``downwardly mobile'' concept, they've left Aurora's comfortable Houston home to either drive a tow truck (Teddy, played by Mackenzie Astin), flunk out of college (Melanie, played by Juliette Lewis), or go to jail (Tommy, played by George Newbern) for drug possession.

Aurora, able to ``feel their pain'' all too clearly, suffers one fresh outrage after another as she struggles beyond all human forbearance to maintain communication with them. Teddy is sweet but is raising a monstrous toddler; Melanie is surly, and Tommy, whom she visits at the state pen, is surlier.

The only friend she really has is her housekeeper, Rosie (Marion Ross), and Rosie soon decides that Aurora is stressing out and needs professional help.

Rosie slyly arranges a meeting with a therapist - which would be an unthinkable lowering of her defenses for Aurora, except that she finds the young counselor, Jerry (Bill Paxton), so good-looking that she's disarmed and is soon yakking away.

It's hard to tell whether Jerry is a fraud or just a little dimwitted, but he's very friendly, and he soon becomes the object of a tug-of-war for his attentions between Aurora and her arch-rival, the 40-ish blond divorcee Patsy (Miranda Richardson), who was the best friend of Aurora's late daughter, Emma.

As for relations between Jerry and Aurora, suffice it to say that in her 60s, the old bird is still capable of surprising herself.

This is only the beginning of a rapid-fire series of emotional events, alternately hilarious and poignant, sculpted down by screenwriter Robert Harling (``Steel Magnolias,'' ``The First Wives Club'') from author Larry McMurtry's 637-page novel.

Harling also makes his directoral debut, and his sensibilities are perfectly tuned to McMurtry's richly affecting character comedy.

Whereas James Brooks, who was also a first-timer when he made ``Terms of Endearment'' had an ephemeral, gliding style that tended to sneak up on you, Harling's is faster-paced, punchier and funnier, with an unfailing instinct for entertainment.

With Winger's Emma gone, Aurora takes center stage in ``The Evening Star,'' and MacLaine is a fiery force of nature in this character study of a willful, judgmental and controlling female whose zest for life and capacity for giving ultimately wins us over.

Not surprisingly, given Harling's credits, the movie's focus is a triangle among three strong females - Aurora, Patsy and the stubborn and self-destructive Melanie, whose loyalty the older women compete for.

Lewis, as Melanie, gives a remarkably natural, tic-free performance, for once, and Richardson (``The Crying Game,'' ``Enchanted April''), who's British, is nonetheless a dead ringer for a Houston socialite, getting every voice inflection and sugary feminine strategy down pat.

MacLaine performs with such conviction and energy that even when the situations seem contrived, on reflection, we're sucked in to the ever-surging melodrama.

The male characters are less well-drawn - Tommy, for instance, does such an abrupt turnaround from seething criminal to model grandson that one suspects some crucial footage was left on the cutting room floor.

For some of the men in the audience, the cavalry will arrive late in the movie with the appearance of Jack Nicholson, who has less than 10 minutes of screen time but absolutely makes the most of it, exuding the cat-that-ate-the-canary charm that made his playboy astronaut character, Garrett Breedlove, so memorable.

Around this time the movie becomes overlong - perhaps its greatest aesthetic failing is the producers' apparent perception that the teary deathbed scenes in ``Terms'' were the best part of the movie. Actually, they were the worst. In the sequel, we get two such episodes. The saving grace is that one of them provides an excuse for Aurora and Garrett to take another top-down spin along the beach in his Corvette - and take a quiet, philosophical stroll that is one of the movie's best scenes.

Once lovers, now soulmates, these two have so much wisened good fun together that it makes getting older look like an enviable condition. If that isn't movie magic, what is?

The film: ``The Evening Star'' (PG-13; adult situations).

The stars: Shirley MacLaine, Bill Paxton, Juliette Lewis, Miranda Richardson, Jack Nicholson, Marion Ross, George Newbern.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Robert Harling. Screenplay by Robert Harling, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. Produced by David Kirkpatrick, Polly Platt, Keith Samples.

Running time: Two hours, nine minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: four stars.

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Photo: A new baby helps bring Aurora (Shirley MacLaine, left), granddaughter-in-law Ellen (Jennifer Grant) and grandson Tommy (George Newbern) together in ``The Evening Star.''