Movies Without Pity – How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Look, I’m 27 years old. I’ve never had a midlife crisis, although I did recently work myself up in to a blind-fury after thinking that somebody in my household ate my block of marble chocolate, so I’m pretty sure that I have a fairly good idea what it would feel like.

Firstly, I’d like to know at what point Stella lost her groove because she seemed to be doing pretty great working in finance barking orders down her headpiece that would make Madonna jealous while pacing the office like she had somewhere to be, not dissimilar to what my cat does all the doo-dah frigging day. Although granted, he is a very busy puss-cat.

So Stella is played by Angela Bassett who basically is one of the most annoying actresses ever. I can never picture her as anything but Katherine Jackson of the Jackson’s American Dream movie yelling angrily in the dark of the night, “GO’DA BED JOE. GO. TO. BED!” Also, she has a punchable face when she seems mad. That aside, she apparently lost her groove somewhere but it wasn’t very clear when that happened. Personally, I think her groove packed its bags and left her, because if I know Stella like I think I do since the end of this movie, I would have ditched her too.

She calls up her skanky friend who is played by Whoopi Goldberg. They decide to go to Jamaica for the week while her son is off with his Dad. She meets Winston Shakespeare and if that’s not a Pornstar’s name, I don’t know what is… Winston is played by Taye Diggs who is alright by me. He plays a 20 year old kid who basically wants to bed her…

Well, come on, it’s not like he saw her and thought, “My what a sexy brain may be under that sweaty cranium.” He’s 20. He wants to have sex. But oh no, oh no, no, no, no, no… Winston chats her up. She laughs in his face over the age difference like a cruel cow, you see she’s 40 and old enough to be his mother and apparently so much better than him because of her skyrocketing age. Though she looks good for 40, her skanky friend on the other hand, she looks her age and is happy hooking up with two super gross older men – more suitable to Stella’s age.

Forgive me, but Stella comes across as more of an uptight bitch. Half of the time she’s out right mean when she isn’t playing the “I’m-so-much-better-than-you” game with her friend. She’s mean to the Shakespeare kid who clearly just wants to hit it… and finally she decides, “Ah what the shit” (yeah that was the exact script.) and she ditches Whoopi to go to some seedy pajama party with Winston. See? What a bitch. Only bitches ditch friends. (I hope you are taking notes, my dear friends. I don’t like pikers!!! Or Angela Bassett.)

The party turns in to some odd masquerade orgy where I saw a lot more skin than I needed to at 10:30pm while eating 3 pieces of KFC chicken before a huge exam in the morning—but I digress, guess I got bored talking about Stella and just wanted to talk about me.

So yeah, they start doing the sex. Yes, I did just call it ‘the sex’. That’s what they do. She’s hot and cold, she’s nice and she’s a bitch, then she’s super sweet but then she’s a bitch again. Kid had to take a job so she was all cold and acted like they were married their whole lives and he’d just insulted her mother and kicked her dog. So she left Jamaica without seeing him.

She gets home, her mean sister gives her shit about having an affair with a 20 year old. Her stereotypical annoying, tacky sister just wants the juicy details – oh and also, to borrow some money. Stella loses her job cos she was busy humpin’ around in the words of Mr Bobby Brown.

But ahhh, there’s a twist. Whoopi gave Winston her number. Might I like to stop and add here that the second Taye Digg’s opened his mouth in this movie and let an almost heretic Jamaican accent slip out, I wanted to shove my hands through a meat grinder. Quite frankly, it would have been less painful than listening to that mess. Blech…

So he finally calls Stell. She acts like 15 yr old girl and starts squealing and shit. She, after telling her poor son she cant take him to Jamaica cos they are too broke, decides to take her son, his cousin and her old arse back to Jamaica to see Winston cos she now wants to do The Sex. Seriously, not only is she a shit friend and a grand-cougar, but she’s also a bad Mom. Oh okaaaay, can’t afford to give your son a holiday, but if your boyfriend is involved then cool!

She has to meet Winston’s Mama who calls her a terrible specimen of the human race who should be flung by human catapult in to a brickwall with spikes as a substitute for the Friday Night Football…Well, something to that effect anyway… So obviously she has a hissy fit for the 155th time already in the movie (no honestly, I’ve counted) and she and Winston have a fight and she gets that annoying punchable face back… Like when in the Jackson’s movie she found out Joe was cheating on her and she went batshit crazy on him.

So in the process Delilah (her bestfriend) finds out she has cancer and is on her last legs so Stella goes rushing home and strangely enough has no remorse about being a horrible friend back in Jamaica. Stella also has no remorse for not asking Delilah how she was, each time the super friend called to check if sex was still good with the Jamaican kid, constantly confirming for Stella that she should continue hitting it for as long as she damn well pleases. Had Stella not been so entirely self-involved in looking for her groove and focused more time on being a better friend, Delilah’s sickness may not have been such a shock, I mean, I picked it when Delilah was over-tired and run down back in the beginning of the movie and I wasn’t even her bestie! But hey, we’ve established Stella is a jerk already. BAD FRIEND.

So Winston turns up at the funeral to loan his penis — er, support to Stella. Everything’s peachy, everybody keeps ignoring the fact that a 20 year old is.. COME ON, WTF MAN… 20 YEARS OLD!!! It’s like a giant pink elephant in the corner of the room. If the person who wrote this movie wanted it to be even in the least bit believable they could have given him a more respectable age!!!!!!! It’s just all so bloody ridiculous!

So he lives with her for awhile and soon it becomes a strain because he eats cereal all day long, plays video games with her son, rents terrible movies and doesn’t take out the trash. (Hang on, this is sounding dangerously close to what I do with my time…?) He wants to pay for dinner, she gets attitude, tells him to pay the mortgage. They have a fight… Taye Diggs is hot, he should come to my place… I’d be nice. I’d let him pay for dinner.

So he builds her a huge furniture shop in her shed (um the other elephant in the room is how this povo Jamaican kid accumulated the funds to do this? I think in one scene I saw him rob Stella’s purse… I could be wrong but… I’m about 99.9% sure so…). She reckon’s she’s good at building it. Hey, I reckon I’m good at singing too, doesn’t mean someone should indulge it and build me a friggin’ studio… but anyway, he proposes to her. I’ve worked this out right, she spent one week in Jamaica, she went back for a second week or so – and then he’s spent what? Like a month or so in the U.S.A?

Dumb.

Only celebrities and bogans (chavs or hillbillies, whatever is local slang for low rent in your country) get married that fast.

She tells him she wants to say yes, but she has to wait.

2 weeks later she still hasn’t given him an answer so he spazzes out and they have a huge fight.

So then there’s this big scene. The scene is entirely cheesy but there is one moment that is the entire saving grace of the movie – the only moment that made the whole thing bearable. Like every Friday in 4th grade when we had a maths quiz and I used to rub out my answers as we went and marked them to perpetrate that I’d had the correct answer all along so I could advance to the “fab four” elite maths group – (which then had to become the fab five after my shifty entrance) … Oh wait, sorry, guess that’s just another story about me.

OH right, the saving grace. Okay yeah, so Winston has a shower and you get to see his ass. And it’s a really, really good ass. I’m not exactly an ass girl, but I can appreciate a very good ass. And this, my friends was a great ass. Seriously, did you get that? It’s a great ass.

So yeah, there’s a super cheesy … sex in the shower… wow that’s never been done before. *yawn* which, might I add, they both looked a little silly… I don’t particularly want to watch people having sex while looking rather silly. So unnecessary. But hey, great ass, Taye. After, Winston realises she’s just a terrible person who clearly doesn’t deserve to even possess a groove let alone someone who has such a great ass, he tells her he’s leaving to go to Medical school.

Personally, I think it was just an excuse to get away from her, he probably wanted to go back to Jamaica to hang with his friends and chicks his own age and spark up a doobie and sing Bob Marley songs or whatever stereotypical thing Jamaicans do…

So there’s a bad storm on the way to the airport and traffic was so bad that he couldn’t make his plane… somehow Stella got there before him though… And they meet at the escalator and she tells him to consider an American college.

And oh yeah, she accepts his proposal.

And then the movie ends. Best they ended it where they did because I’m pretty sure they would have broken up within the week.

All in all? I now know that all it takes to get your groove back is a boyfriend that is way too young for you. Well, at least that’s how Stella got her groove back and to be honest, I found her method underwhelming… but maybe they could make a sequel and call it, “How Taye Diggs got his career back” … because if it wasn’t for that great ass, his Jamaican accent would have been truly unforgiveable.

So, out of 10 I’ll give this movie a 4/10 +1 point for the great ass.