HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK
Stella (Angela Bassett) is a highly placed, 40-year-old stock broker
in the San Francisco area. She's a single mother with lots of work, lots
of stress, and lots of money, but no time to spend it. She takes a trip
to Jamaica with her best friend Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg), where she falls
in love with 20-year-old Winston (Taye Diggs) and has great sex for the
first time in years. The downside is, now she has to explain it to her sisters,
Vanessa (Regina King) and Angela (Suzzanne Douglas). Vanessa, the more brash
of the two, really has no problem with her big sister's fling, but Angela,
who is more "refined," is horrified. Meanwhile, Winston is struggling
between his adolescent tastes and trying to be a grownup for the woman he
loves.
There's only one thing missing from this story, and it's the main ingredient:
conflict. Oh, sure, Stella is inexplicably downsized out of her job when
she returns from vacation, but this causes almost no difficulty in her wealthy
life, and it is offered back to her at a much higher salary after the company
comes to its senses. And there is a death thrown in as if to make up for
this film's embarrasing lack of meaning, but it is a minor diversion. Some
of the film's best acting is done during this digression, however, in the
ad-libbed hospital scene between Bassett and Goldberg.
I have no problem with the acting in this film, nor with Jeffrey Jur's
cinema, which is full of beautiful shots of tropical sunsets, but the storyline
is little more than a sitcom episode drawn out to over two hours in length.
It is mostly pith and scenery, and it drags terribly at times. Director
Kevin Rodney Sullivan has fashioned a lovely commercial for Jamaica and
captured a few nice acting moments. But are we supposed to feel sorry for
a fabulously attractive and wealthy woman, who is being followed around
by a fabulously attractive man young enough to be her son? A woman whose
biggest problem is hearing "cradle robber" from her sister or
deciding whether to buy a Beemer this year or another Mercedes?
Please. If you're gonna make a chick flick, fine. But have a little respect for the women you're targeting. They can handle more than pretty pictures and cheap sentimentality. ***