How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Stella gets her groove back, alright, but the film is still in need by the time you get to the end credits. Angela Bassett gives a kick-ass performance in the title role as a fortysomething woman who can't decide what to do when she falls in love with twenty-one year-old Taye Diggs while on vacation at a resort in Jamaica. Do 'im is what I say: if a woman like Bassett looks that good at the age of forty she deserves the best of everything. Besides, Diggs doesn't look nearly young enough for the part, and that keeps reality at bay for the two and some odd hours that the film runs at. The scene where teenage girls get in line behind the couple at a movie theatre and give Stella dirty looks for robbing the cradle always puzzles me; if I were that young an age and found myself standing behind Angela Bassett I'd be asking her what kind of skin creams does she use and does she work out and maybe there might be a portrait hidden in her attic that has all her sins hanging off it? Whoopi Goldberg gives the best and funniest performance in the film, but even she can't prevent the script by Ronald Bass and Terry McMillan (upon whose novel this is based) from seeming like it's two or three drafts short of being finished. Watch it if only for a great soundtrack and some beautiful photography of Jamaica's beaches.