How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Director: Kevin Rodney Sullivan. Cast: Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg, Regina King, Suzzanne
Douglas, Michael J. Pagan, Glynn Turman. Screenplay: Terry McMillan and Ronald Bass (based on the novel
by Terry McMillan).
Even more featherweight than Six Days, Seven Nights, the summer of 1998's
other high-profile romp in the tropics, How Stella Got Her Groove Back is also more disappointing,
because it doesn't seem to understand its virtues or to know its own limitations. The makers of the
Ford-Heche picture knew they just had to throw a bunch of buttery light on to pretty beaches and pretty
people, and everything would be fine; even if a few too many pirates showed up in that bizarre middle
portion, Six Days was an unremarkable picture (obviously!) but a smooth enough flight. How
Stella Got Her Groove Back, by contrast, tries to say something, and even though I do not
question its sincerity—co-screenwriter and author of the original novel Terry McMillan definitely wants
40+ women to have their sexual options open—the look, music, and essential aimlessness of Kevin Rodney
Sullivan's direction make clear that Stella is nothing if not a travel agent's dream ad for sunny
Jamaica.
Angela Bassett is starting to find herself in that Joan Allen predicament: nobody doubts that she is a
fabulous actress, astoundingly strong even when her material is meager, but it may be high time for both
of these ladies to start picking better projects. Stella is a single mother who has just lost her job and
has no man, which apparently constitutes a "lost groove" to those pitiful souls who are stuck looking like
Angela "Biceps" Bassett when they're over 40 and have enough money even as unemployed single mothers to
hop back and forth to a Caribbean bungalow (with an extra hop to New York City, though it's not about
pleasure) several times within a year or two. Here's where McMillan's urge to make a plea on behalf of
middle-aged women, particularly black middle-aged women, seems a little foolhardy, since the intended
beneficiaries of her good will are unlikely to identify with a buffed-up, bejeweled screen goddess. A
movie in which Eleanor Holmes Norton hooks up with a Playgirl-ready hunk o' love would be another
matter entirely, you dig? Which brings up Taye Diggs, the muscular, jocular boy toy who has a hankering
for Bassett, but only looks about five years younger than her—certainly not more than 10, and the script
wants us to believe she is literally twice his age.
The relationship between these two never feels as challenged or obstacle-written as the dialogue keeps
insisting, though in a bizarre twist, those moments where the characters do feel able to get over
it and shag in peace spring from circumstances that are not persuasive or convincing as events that might
bring a difficult match to fruition. Whoopi Goldberg brings some trademark pizzazz to her role as
Stella's friend Delilah (love all these names), but then the script just decides it's finished with her;
Victor Garber, whom we last saw married to Goldberg in Rodgers & Hammerstein's
Cinderella and sinking on the Titanic, has absolutely ZERO to do
as Stella's boss, who decides he wants her back not too long after letting her go. It's also the kind of
movie where a successful, crisply efficient businesswoman pines for the days when she dreamed of making
her own furniture-building studio, but when her new love wins Big Points for building her one, the music
swells, the actors get teary—and then we never see Bassett so much as hammer a leg into a chair. What's
up?
There is nothing really objectionable about How Stella Goet Her Groove Back so long as it's
providing the kind of party we expected: a sunny mirage of beautiful people making goo-goo eyes against
cloudless and palm-treed vistas. I just don't understand why the movie doesn't have the sense to ride
that unambitious but foolproof wave, and why it seems overwhelmed by the simple acts of throwing a
roadblock in the way of romance and believably moving it out again. This isn't rocket science, folks, and
if you're going to hire Bassett and Goldberg, you need to give them more scenes like some casual
grace-notes at the beginning when Stella and Delilah are just lounging around the hotel shooting the
breeze. In the meantime, How Stella Got Her Groove Back falls short of the easiest of goals, and
Bassett proves again that she can be suckered into some pretty lame roles and pictures without much
hesitation. Please God tell me that movies like this don't mean that no one in Hollywood has the sense to
offer this shockingly bright talent anything better to play.
The NAACP Image Awards recently bent over backwards to celebrate this picture and its star at the expense
of a genuinely moving and strikingly executed motion picture, some little ditty called Beloved. The outcome of this voting not only bumps the Image trophy a couple
notches below the annual Blockbuster citations, it mistakes the intent of a project and the size of the
gap it fills for actual or attention-worthy quality. I, too, would like to see more escapist, middle-brow
entertainment made for and about Black characters and audiences, but not if they're as thin and dizzy as
this one is. When Angela Bassett gets another role like Tina Turner, or even some more blazingly fierce
ass-kicking like she got to do in Strange Days—then, my friend,
that will be one groove I will rejoice to see gotten back. Grade: C–