Rating: 
Summary: A nice movie for the ladies!
Review: I just saw this movie again this past weekend. Each time I do, I want to hop on the next plane to Jamaica. The shots of the island and Stella's room were wonderful! Angela Bassett's performance as Stella was refreshing. There aren't too many movies which showcase successful, intelligent, and independent African American women. And, of course, Stella's beauty and physique makes 40 worth looking forward to. I didn't think that the chemistry between Winston (Taye Diggs) and Stella was very magical, at least not like in the book, but I thought they made a nice pairing thanks to Bassett's performance. And Diggs' performance in the shower made him a worthwhile addition. The best chemistry was between Bassett and Goldberg. They remind me so much of me and my best friend! And the bickering between the sisters was hilarious. The women, in general, just stand out in this film. A great movie to watch especially when hanging out with the girls.
Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful love story, with some flaws.
Review: This movie is one of those that makes your heart beat faster as you get caught up in the lives of the two main characters and root them along in their love relationship. Angela Bassett is a great and gorgeous actress, and Taye Diggs is soooo hot- ladies, it is worth buying this movie just to rewatch him in that shower scene near the end! However, I felt like I couldn't always sympathesize with the main character because I found her selfish at times. The part with Whoopie Goldberg, whose on-screen character was her best friend, was very good and sad, but I felt as if the main character was having too much fun focusing on her boyfriend and her trips to Jamaica to care about her best friend when she needed it most. I felt the same was true about her son, and about how she treated her boyfriend at times when she was experiencing difficulty at work. Furthermore, I felt there were some awkward and underdeveloped parts... I don't want to give anything away for those of you who haven't seen it, so I will just say that there were some surprise scenes that were successful surprises but that really should have had some beginning line of plot for the viewer's interest. Certain scenes are melodramtic and unrealistic, but I guess that's what a romantic movie is all about. :) This movie, although containing flaws which I have mentioned above, is worth watching because of the good acting, the beautiful scenery, the heart-swooning love scenes and story, and the sappy ending. (And... have I mentioned Taye Diggs! :) If you are in the mood for a relaxing and romantic evening, snuggle up with "How Stella Got Her Groove Back". (However, read the book first if you haven't, because I wish I would have done that.)
Rating: 
Summary: Whack! Terrible
Review: This movie was whack it was kinda of good but Taye Diggs cannot act Jamaican and he looked ugly! I bet you that Omar Epps could have done a better Jamaican. and the book was quadruple times better even more!
Rating:
Summary: Four star rating but with a couple of reservations
Review: pI couldn't help but enjoy How Stella Got Her Groove Back, though it deals only in surface emotions. Many people prefer not to deal with issues anyway, and this is a perfect romantic comedy/drama for them. It is far superior to 1998's other tropical island movie, the clunky Six Days, Seven Nights.It is always fun to see Angela Basset and Whoppi Goldberg, two of our greatest actresses, on the screen. Their careers are somewhat similar. Both have had difficulty in obtaining consistently good roles. Both have been nominated for Best Actress Oscars. Goldberg won for Best Supporting Actress in Ghost. Stella [Bassett] is the forty year old working mother of a ten year old boy. A successful financial executive, she's become a workaholic. Her friends see that her life is unbalanced, and they urge her to liven it up. She resists, but, finally, reality hits home. On a whim, she calls her oldest friend, Delilah [Whoppi Goldberg], and suggests a week in Jamaica. She's due a vacation, and the son is going off to see his Dad. The two pals hop on a plane. Stella has no clue as to just how lively her life is about to become. She meets a sexy, intelligent man named Winston [Taye Davis]. There is instant mutual attraction. The catch it that Winston is half her age. Encouraged by the spunky, outrageous Delilah, Stella decides to have a short affair. Catch number two arises when this odd couple realizes the relationship is much deeper than a casual island fling. Stella tries to force an arbitrary end to it and returns home. This is the basis for the plot. Where will the relationship end? How can something so socially unacceptable ever work? I think many people enjoy stories about eccentric or unusual people and situations. A lot of us live conventionally out of fear or necessity, rather than out of a lifestyle preference. It pleases us to watch fictional characters who go beyond our relatively limited boundaries. Stella, Delilah and Winston are three of those characters. As I said, the movie is short on substance. We never really know what motivates Stella or Winston. Issues come up, but are either quickly dropped or are given a simple solution, much like a TV sitcom. We enjoy the story, but at the conclusion, we realize we hardly know either Stella or Winston. Jamaica is photographed at its very best. I was tempted to call my travel agent. Bassett and Davis do a fine job, considering the script limitations. Bassett, a Yale graduate, is a fish out of water in some of the scenes with Stella's down home family and friends. Goldberg fares better. Her role is smaller but more fleshed out. I hope some juicy roles come her way. She needs something more compelling than playing center square on TV's Hollywood Squares game.
Rating:
Summary: I Wasn't Wild About This One, But It's Worth a Look
Review: Terry McMillan's followup to "Waiting to Exhale," "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," was dismissed by some critics as a fluffy beach romance novel. It definitely had its spunk, but suffered from an overall blah-ness that weighed it down. The movie version has similar problems. Our heroine, played by the fierce talent that is Angela Bassett, is a broker trying to balance her career and being a single mom. She, along with her best friend (Whoopi Goldberg), takes a vacation to Jamaica, where she falls for the striking Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs, whose Jamaican accent fades in and out throughout his otherwise solid performance). The problem? She's 40. And he's 20. You can pretty much imagine the issues these two have to face, as they decide whether or not to start a "serious" relationship. "How Stella..." is a pleasant movie, despite the often sappy touches that almost mar the film. The love story itself is fairly predictable, although the supporting roles from Suzzane Douglas and the always-dependable Regina King are pretty good. Don't go looking to get blown away by this movie. Like the novel on which it's based, it will pass your time nicely without requiring any deep thought.
Rating: 
Summary: Ageism incarnate
Review: Someone just has to say this. When this movie was filmed in '97 (it was released in '98), Angela Bassett was barely 39 and Taye Diggs was almost 26. That is HARDLY the massive, upsetting, life-altering age difference suggested by the script or the novel it was based on. Furthermore, Angela Bassett is one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood (or anywhere for that matter), totally buff, and could probably pass, easily, for 28 or 29. On the other hand, Taye Diggs, a very handsome guy, is no kid. He's a big guy, and mature looking and acting. I am sure he could have been cast easily in a part for a 30 or 35 year old. So there is no discernable or meaningful age difference here and that queers the entire premise of the movie! Not to mention, just to confuse things more, Digg's character is shown to be from an affluent, educated family and headed for medical school. His work as a Jamaican "pool boy" is just a summer job. This renders the whole concept a total cheat. It really would be shocking (and manipulative) if a rich, middle-aged woman from the US took sexual advantage of an uneducated young boy from a third world country. You'd see the sexual exploitation right off. It's so muffled here that we are drowning out any real thoughtfulness with our cries of "you go, girl!" A sobby subplot (very unbelievable) with Whoppie Goldberg addes nothing to the mix. It is quite interesting how our culture accepts romances with older men/younger women without so much as a blink, but let a gorgeous fit woman in early middle age have a slightly younger boyfriend, and it's supposed to be a big deal. It isn't. And this movie isn't much of anything. Try making a movie about the above issue (why it's OK for an old geezer to take a young trophy wife). That might be a challenging flick. In short: a waste of film, except you get to watch Angela Bassett which is worthwhile anytime.
Rating:
Summary: disappointment
Review: this movie should have been better cause the book was superb. Many things that happened in the book didn't happen in the movie. Big disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: I love this movie...it is really good!
Review: How Stella Got Her Groove Back is an amazingly refreshing movie with a stellar soundtrack and cast. It is the kind of movie that brings out so many different emotions in a person. It made me laugh, smile, and cry! The acting really brings the film to a higher level. This is a movie that I can watch over and over and never get tired of it! I give it 5 stars. I also want to mention that Whoopi does an AMAZING job here! This is probably some of her best work (besised The Color Purple)! If you are a fan of Whoopi, then this is a must-see!
Rating:
Summary: You're never too old.
Review: This is not your regular old girl meets boy movie.Angela B. is stunning at any age. Who says an older woman has to be sedate.It is truly a film that you will want to watch more than once.
Rating:
Summary: Chocolate covered cheese...but fun
Review: This is the perfect brownie-point rental for guys when it comes to women you're dating: a cheesy chick-flick with such great cinematography (and enough shots of the ultra buff Taye Diggs naked for the ladies) that it's lot of fun. I say cheesy first of all because the script and setting were a diluted, cleaned up version of a great idea that has been done several times: woman turning forty falls in love with a man while on vacation who is (only) 21. Susan Sarandon did a movie with the exact same plot years ago. The only problem is this: they made Angela Bassett's character, so incredibly perfect a woman, devoid of any issues to muddy the theme of the oh-so-pure-and-made-wrong-by-society's-hypocrises desire of an older woman to hit it with an impressionable young man, that no more than two percent of the female population in America could ever relate to her. A perfect size six, near-marathon running, happily divorced, high level stock broker...blissfully happy single mother, with an obvious million dollar home...NO issues whatsoever with her teenage son or ex husband...making at least a quarter million dollars a year... Oh, and of course, there are no real issues at her job either, where she is the only woman, not to mention Black woman, at her level in the corporation she's working for. (Angela Bassett's character's life looks like a three dimensional version of what a lonely, overweight grad student female would write about herself in a personals ad for kicks while laughing with her girlfriends, wondering what hunks or losers would reply to it.) If you've ever been around a woman who, while talking about an issue she had, just gave you the feeling she was telling you the biggest most convoluted lie you've ever heard in order to keep something ugly a secret (and the secret thing really isn't as ugly as she's ironically making it out to be), imagine if she made a movie about herself, and you'd understand what gets in the way of your really liking this film as much as empathizing with the character's dilemma would want you to. If Bassett's character had at least ONE issue besides being an obvious workaholic (which of course is never explained as being an effect of some other issue's cause--when touched on at all after the first ten minutes), a normal everyday woman would be able to relate to her almost easily. But nope, she's perfect; a consistent reminder that what you're watching isn't real. And of course, though other men ignite the jealousies of Taye Diggs' character as they pursue Angela Bassett's while the two get deeper involved in the film, there wasn't a 20-year old, beautiful, intelligent, size six with aerobics-instructor boobies-type young Black woman within 20 miles of Taye Diggs to seriously inflame the jealousies or insecurities of Angela Bassett's character throughout the entire picture. That really covertly--or perhaps unconsciously--sent the wrong message to me about what the Sisterhood really consists of, when it comes to insecurity-based jealousies, image vs. inner self and sense of self worth, a woman's view of sexual attraction and the aging female body, and competition for a man in the woman's version of the real world. In other words, the movie does a service by showing the world, once again, the sex-based hypocrisies of double standards when it comes to dating and falling in love in society, regarding "May/December" romances (its [somehow] okay for men to be Decembers but not women). And it does so with Whoopi being at the top of her game; she is hilarious all the way through, until she becomes as poignant as you've ever seen her near the end. But it balances out all that goodness--in fact, almost completely negates it--by the great disservice it does of making it all but impossible for an average woman to actually relate to this character, and what actual inner demons the average woman really would have to fight to have this kind of love in her life. It's almost as if they--our famous sister author/screenplaywright Terry McMillan and the director--are trying to show women a good time, but are actually saying subliminally "By the way girl, you BETTER be a size six, six percent body fat, stock broker single mother with a six figure income, absolutely no regrets of a failed marriage and no Oedipal/codependency issues with your teenage son in a million dollar home, if you're gonna be forty years old and try to get with a 21 year old man." That is something no man I know, 21 or otherwise, has any interest in saying to a woman, unless he's got some ugly axe to grind. But you hear women saying the rough equivalent of that to themselves and each other virtually everyday. That, of course, just might have a woman feeling covertly worse about herself after the laughs and the Jamaican cinematography of this movie wear off. But of course, what probably makes the movie still work is the same thing that makes an unbelieveably bad karate/action movie or spy thriller work for guys (like me): the suspension of disbelief for the benefit of bonding around an issue. This is the kind of movie a group of girls together would forgive all the bad stuff for and route for Angela right on through to the end. And it has some great moments. NOT the movie to see if you're a normal woman who wants this kind of courageous love affair to actually work--and they can in the real world (when I was twenty-five, I was in love with a "Stella".) But fun for anyone else.
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