How Stella Got Her Groove Back

The film adaptation of Terry McMillan's novel best-selling novel provides a great lesson in short-term benefit vs. long-term detriment. The premise involves a 40-year-old divorced single mother named Stella (Angela Bassett) who falls for a 20-year-old man (Taye Diggs) while on a Jamaican holiday with best pal Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg). That's a switch from the novel, where Delilah has in fact been dead for nearly two years. Adding Delilah lends some spice to the second-chance romance story line, with Goldberg always fun to watch even if she is doing little more than her latest funky-sassy Miss Thang riff. So much for the short-term benefit. When Delilah leaves the narrative early on, we're left with Stella fussing and fretting ad nauseam over her May/October romance. Her reasons for getting involved don't even make enough sense, as Bassett plays Stella with a bump-n-grind confidence that suggests she has too much groove still in her to need getting any of it back. The combination of unfocused motivation and little comic relief proves fatal in the film's final 45 minutes. The story has nowhere to go but around in circles, leading to a lot of will-they-or-won't-they vacillation over a pairing that, on screen, doesn't have nearly enough chemistry. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)