How Stella Got Her Groove Back
USA 1998
Reviewed by Nina Caplan
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Stella is a stockbroker and single mother who jogs daily and looks far younger than her 40 years. The only thing she is bad at is having a good time. However, when she takes a holiday with her best friend Delilah in Jamaica she soon starts a romance with Winston Shakespeare, a Jamaican half her age. The romance ends badly but unknown to Stella, Delilah gives Winston her phone number. When she loses her job and Winston phones, she agrees to go back to see him, despite the disapproval of her sister Angela.
Winston wins over Stella's son Quincy, but Winston's own parents disapprove of his relationship with Stella. Meanwhile, in New York Delilah goes into hospital with cancer, an illness she had hidden from Stella. When it worsens, the doctor calls Stella who flies back to be with her friend when she dies. Winston appears at the funeral to offer support and moves in with Stella and Quincy. Most of Stella's friends and family overcome their disapproval, although Angela still disdains Winston. The age difference becomes a problem between them: their tastes are different and the fact that Winston is jobless, penniless and undecided about his future aggravates their difficulties. Nevertheless, he asks Stella to marry him; when she dithers, he decides to return to Jamaica and resume his interrupted medical studies. Stella lets him go, but follows him to the airport and agrees to the marriage.
Review
A love story between a 40-year-old woman and a boy half her age, How Stella Got Her Groove Back makes a valiant effort to be contentious without actually annoying anyone. The film tries to examine the antiquated prejudices still lurking beneath the glossy new-age surface of the US in the 90s, but it backtracks immediately by casting youthful-looking Angela Bassett in the title role. Her paramour, the gloriously named Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs) - calm, mature, self-directed and monogamous - hardly behaves much like your average 20-year-old man either.
Other reasons make it hard to take the film's central premise seriously. First-time director Kevin Rodney Sullivan fumbles the key love scenes in Jamaica where the couple meet, making them stylistically reminiscent of the travel-advertisement type of 80s pop video (think of Duran Duran's 'Rio'). The copulating couple even groan in time to the soundtrack, while coy pans to the surrounding mountains provide more viewing interest than the couple on the bed.
The film also has a bad case of tunnel vision, homing in on its older woman-younger man problem at the expense of other issues. Why, for example, does Stella assume that a holiday romance would make her a slut? The film could have used her assumptions to examine different attitudes to sex between the generations but it doesn't. Winston accepts that his penury is a problem because a 'real man' would take financial responsibility for 'his woman'.
The incipient rivalry between Stella's 11-year-old son Quincy and Winston is also brushed over. Quincy comments on Mom's and Winston's ages once to his cousin, is won over and then pipes down - apart from once in a man-to-man talk where he warns Winston not to hurt his mother. The scene leaves the spectator wondering why an age gap is worth making a film about when even an 11-year-old seems ready, in emotional terms, to apply for a pension.
That the film skips along is thanks largely to Stella's best friend Delilah. In this, her trademark role - spunky black woman with the heart of gold - Whoopi Goldberg provides a colourful contrast to Bassett's pastel sartorial and dramatic style. Unfortunately Goldberg's character is also used to ram home the message that if you look like a film star, the world is your five-star hotel suite. If not, you face either neglect or humiliation. Winston even upstages Delilah's funeral by arriving half way through for an impassioned reconciliation with the grief-stricken Stella.
This is one of the film's few emotional outbursts. "Don't go there," various characters say when others bring up personal, hurtful or humiliating topics, as if emotions comprised an actual landscape with pockets of forbidden territory. All very well as topography for touchy-feely dialogue, but a somewhat timid approach given that the film revolves around an uneven relationship and a hard-edged family duality - Stella's sister Angela embodies the self-righteous disapproval of the outside world, while younger sister Vanessa is the money-conscious, prurient element. So, despite its glorious Jamaican setting, How Stella Got Her Groove Back doesn't travel as far as it should in its exploration of putative taboos and relationship problems. Stella's groove, like the film itself, doesn't run deep.
Credits
- Producer
- Deborah Schindler
- Screenplay
- Terry McMillan
- Ron Bass
- Based on the novel by
- Terry McMillan
- Director of Photography
- Jeffrey Jur
- Editor
- George Bowers
- Production Designer
- Chester Kaczenski
- Music
- Michel Colombier
- ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- Production Company
- Twentieth Century Fox presents a Deborah Schindler production
- Executive Producers
- Terry McMillan
- Ron Bass
- Jennifer Ogden
- Production Co-ordinators
- Laura Stuart
- Jamaica:
- Montez Monroe
- Unit Production Managers
- Dwight Williams
- Jennifer Ogden
- Jamaica:
- Natalie Thompson
- Location Managers
- Antoinette Levine
- Jamaica:
- Peter I. Packer
- Post-production Supervisor
- P. Todd Coe
- Assistant Directors
- Steve Danton
- Donald L. Sparks
- Seth Edelstein
- Angela Barnes
- Jamaica:
- John Riley
- Ian A. Williams
- Script Supervisors
- Renata Schneuer-Barnett
- Jamaica:
- Pamela Alch
- Casting
- Francine Maisler
- Jamaica:
- Cecile Burrowes
- ADR Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Camera Operators
- Don Devine
- Jamaica:
- Richard Lannaman
- Steadicam Operators
- Guy Norman Bee
- Kirk R. Gardner
- Wescam Operator
- David Norris
- Special Effects
- Ultimate Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- John Hartigan
- Foreman:
- Richard Buckler
- Technicians:
- Paul Sokol
- George Paine
- Art Director
- Marc Dabe
- Set Designers
- Christopher S. Nushawg
- Eric Orbom
- Set Decorator
- Judi Giovanni
- Stella's Vessels and Furniture
- Frank E. Cummings III
- Storyboard Illustrator
- Chris Buchinsky
- Costume Designer
- Ruth E. Carter
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Karen M. Davis
Make-up- Department Head:
- Judy Murdock
- Key:
- Joseph Regina
- Body:
- Jene Fielder
- Hair
- Co-department Heads:
- Julia L. Walker
- Sterfon Demings
- Jamaica, Additional Artist:
- Jacqueline Gareave
- Main Titles
- Scarlet Letters
- End Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Score Lyrics
- Brenda Russell
- Musicians
- Harmonica:
- Toots Thielemans
- Guitar:
- Dann Huff
- Fretless Bass:
- John Patitucci
- Steel Drums:
- Andy Narell
- Percussion:
- Michael Fisher
- Synth Programmer:
- Eric Persing
- Concert Master
- Ralph Morrison
- Choir Master
- Edie Lehmann Boddicker
- Featured Score Vocalist
- Oleta Adams
- Conductor
- Jeffrey Schindler
- Music Editors
- Chris McGeary
- Tom Kramer
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Mick Guzauski
- Additional Recording
- Gil Morales
- Soundtrack
- "Free Again" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, Caron Wheeler, Beresford Romeo, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler & Jazzie B; "Shotgun" by Autry De Walt, performed by Jr Walker & The Allstars; "Put It On", "Could You Be Loved" by Bob Marley, performed by Bob Marley and the Wailers; "Ain't That a Groove" by James Brown, Nat Brown, performed by James Brown; "Rivers of Babylon" by Brent Dowe, Frank Farian, Trevor MacNaughton, George Reyam, performed by The Upbeaters; "Make My Body Hot" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, James Wright, Diana King, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by Diana King; "The Art of Seduction" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, Max Elliott, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by Maxi Priest; "Dance for Me" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, Kevin Ford, performed by Kevin Ford featuring Rufus Blaq; "Makes Me Sweat" by Moses Davis, Christopher Rios, Michael Hutchence, Andrew Farris, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry
Lewis, performed by Big Punisher & Beenie Man, contains elements of "Need You Tonight" by Michael Hutchence, Andrew Farris; "Beautiful" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, Mary J. Blige, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by Mary J. Blige; "Fly Girl Jazz Hop" by Bosco Kante, Tracy Robinson; "Luv Me, Luv Me" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, Orville Burrell, Alexander Richbourg, R. Hammond, Norman Whitfield, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by Shaggy featuring Janet; contains elements from "Impeach the President" by R. Hammond, performed by The Honey Drippers, also contains resung elements from "Ooh Boy" by NormanWhitfield; "Golden Time of Day" by Frankie Beverly, performed by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly; "Got to Give It Up" by/performed by Marvin Gaye; "Row Row Row Your Boat" (trad); "Never Say Never Again" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, James Wright, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by K-Ci & JoJo; "Escape to Jamaica" by Rupert Holmes, Marion Hall, performed by Lady Saw featuring Nadine Sutherland; "Flash Light" by George Clinton Jr, William Collins, Bernard Worrell, performed by Parliament; "Mastablasta '98" by Stevie Wonder, Wyclef Jean, Jerry Duplessis, performed by Stevie Wonder & Wyclef Jean, contains elements from "(Fallin Like) Dominoes" by H. Clayton, Mabaji, Sigidi, performed by Donald Byrd; "Let Me Have You" by/performed by Me'Shell N'degéocello, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Me'Shell N'degéocello; "Your Home Is in My Heart (Stella's Love Theme)" by James Harris III, Terry Lewis, arranged by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, performed by Boyz II Men featuring Chanté Moore - Choreography
- Russell Clark
- Sound Mixer
- Susumu Tokunow
Re-recording Mixers- Jim Bolt
- Rick Hart
- Christian Minkler
- Additional Re-recording
- Stan Kastner
- Recordists
- Tim Gomillion
- Tracy Bolt
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Steven D. Williams
- Sound Editors
- Victor Iorillo
- Craig Berkey
- Dialogue Editor
- David Kulczycki
- ADR
- Recordist:
- David Lucarelli
- Mixer:
- Charlene Richards
- Editors:
- Andrea Horta
- Lisa Levine
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Ted Caplan
- Walkers:
- Alicia Stevenson
- Paul Stevenson
- Dawn Fintor
- Recordist:
- Carrie Cashman
- Mixer:
- Dave Betancourt
- Editor:
- Donald Sylvester
- Animal Wrangler
- Angelo Rivers
- Cast
- Angela Bassett
- Stella
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Delilah
- Regina King
- Vanessa
- Suzzanne Douglas
- Angela
- Taye Diggs
- Winston Shakespeare
- Michael J. Pagan
- Quincy
- Sicily
- Chantel
- Richard Lawson
- Jack
- Barry 'Shabaka' Henley
- Buddy
- Lee Weaver
- Nate
- Glynn Turman
- Doctor Shakespeare
- Phyllis Yvonne Stickney
- Mrs Shakespeare
- Lou Myers
- Uncle Ollie
- James Pickens Jr
- Walter
- Carl Lumbly
- Judge Boyle
- Denise Hunt
- Ms Thang
- Lisa Hanna
- Abby
- Philip Casnoff
- Kennedy
- D'Army Bailey
- minister
Art Metrano- Doctor Steinberg
- Phina Oruche
- Leslie
- Tenny Miller
- kitchen worker
- Andrew Palmer
- buffet server
- Harold Dawkins
- Kenneth Buckford
- Simon Street
- The Upbeaters, band
- Craig Blake
- Winston's friend
- Elisabeth Granli
- girl in Jamaica commercial
Steve Danton- man in commercial
- Elly McGuire
- Stella's friend
- Selma McPherson
- Fern Ward
- friends at party
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- 20th Century Fox (UK)
- 11,204 feet
- 124 minutes 30 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour/Prints by
- DeLuxe