TV REVIEW : Dancin’, Romancin’ at the ‘Savoy’

Directed by choreographer Debbie Allen and centered around a famous Harlem nightclub of the ‘30s, “Stompin’ at the Savoy” (Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS, Channels 2 and 8) sounds like more of a musical than it turns out to be. It’s too much staginess and not enough stomp. Still, a tremendously appealing, almost all-black ensemble cast nearly makes up in charm what the spottily melodramatic TV movie lacks in focus.

Chart-topper Vanessa Williams gets most of the musical numbers as an aspiring thrush holding down a gig as the Savoy’s hat-check girl until she can get a crack at the spotlight, with the help of cousin Mario Van Peebles and club booker/likely beau Michael Warren.

Though the plot seems reminiscent of the old “Golddiggers” movies in its backstage milieu and narrative emphasis on snagging men, the other three women characters aren’t in show biz: Lynn Whitfield (“The Josephine Baker Story”) is an ambitious schemer who wants to open her own beauty shop; Jasmine Guy plays a sweet, suffering thing who gets married to a member of the perpetually unemployed, and Vanessa Bell Calloway is a domestic who gets reluctantly involved with a white actor.

The idea that these four gals’ friendship is centered around the Savoy Ballroom isn’t quite enough to hold together the often unrelated plot strands, which delve into their (mostly) separate romances with Van Peebles, Warren, Darnell Williams and John Di Aquino. But it does naturally allow for some occasional peppy swing choreography by 1989 Tony winners (and actual Savoy dancers of the 1930s) Norma Miller and Frank Manning.

Eventually the plot grows darker and gets into cat fights, instant nervous breakdowns and sudden death, seeming less like “Golddiggers of 1939” than an awkward period version of “Valley of the Dolls.” And it’s beyond director Allen to give Beverly M. Sawyer’s script the kind of dramatic thrust its jumpy logic lacks. But sometimes charisma can suffice, and “Stompin’ ” just about gets by on good will and fresh faces.