The chief appeal of a “Calendar Girls,” “Poms,” or “80 for Brady” movie is the chance to see venerable and venerated film stars taking themselves on a trip down memory lane, and us along with them.

Such movies are an outreach to older audiences, who rightfully feel left out of the movie-going conversation as Hollywood has, at least recently, been all about the youth movie market with little time for anything else.

If only “The Magic of Belle Isle” or “And So It Goes” or that Oscar winners chasing Tom Brady ego trip were any good, maybe that audience could be lured back, if only out of nostalgia. They showed up for “Brady,” at least.

“Queen Bees” is another missed opportunity. An almost laughless “Mean Girls in a Retirement Community” comedy built around Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn, Emmy winner Jane Curtin and screen icons James Caan, Ann-Margret and Loretta Devine, it has possibilities baked into it, and little to show for them.

Burstyn plays Helen, an elderly widow whose latest kitchen “accident” gets her booked into Pine Groves Senior Living community, run by Ken DeNardo (French Stewart) but “ruled” by the “Mean Girls with Medic-Alert bracelets.”

That would be snippy, bossy martinet Janet (Curtin), with her running mates Sally (Devine) and Margot (Ann-Margret) by her side.

They save seats in the cafeteria, stick their noses in other people’s business and generally get their way in every way. Helen resists them with a “What is this, high school?” But soon she’s fallen in with them.

And then the complication of a man (Caan) enters her life, and she and we wonder if she’ll ever get out of here and back into her home?

Christopher Lloyd plays a leering local “character in the community. Just add his name to the talents pretty much wasted on this enterprise, apparently inspired by a producer’s mother’s retirement community.

As with most films in this sort, the big mistake is assuming that putting good, proven actors into that setting is enough to get a movie out of it. There’s got to be more to the tale than “cute old folks in a quirky old folks home.”

It doesn’t have to be “Cocoon” or “The Comeback Trail” or “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” but there has to be more to the STORY than this, more to the movie than just little pearls of wisdom from those who have lived long enough to acquire that wisdom.

“Life is 10 percent what happens to you, and 90 percent how you react to it.”

Indeed it is. And?

Rating: PG-13, innuendo, profanity

Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jane Curtin, Ann-Margret, Loretta Devine, Alec Malpa, French Stewart, Christopher Lloyd and James Caan.

Credits: Directed by Michael Lembeck, scripted by A Gravitas Ventures release on Netflix.

Running time: 1:40