How Stella Shook Her Groove Thang Or Something Like That

As a movie critic, it is my job to sit through what can sometimes be a horrible experience. For better or worse, I saw the entirety of Godzilla, The Avengers, Cable Guy, and more. I do this so that you, the penny-pinching movie-goer, will not have to be so tortured.

Recently, I saw How Stella Grooved Her Brick House or something.

And left about half way through it. Lord, it was bad!

The film stars Angela Bassett and Whoopi Goldberg. Angela is Stella. Whoopi is comic relief. The movie is bad.

We open our film with Stella. She's lost her groove. She calls Whoopi and they go to Jamaica for a booty call. Stella finds booty, therefore, finds groove. Sex equals life-fulfillment.

Naturally, I have no problem with that. It's a good message, one we should teach our youth to honor. But this movie is not the forum that particular platform needs. The conflict, if you can call it conflict, is that Stella is 40, and the Booty with which she scratches her itch is only 20. This is supposed to be a problem. My oh my, how will they ever get past that?

"I'm old enough to be your mother!"

"Yeah, so?"

"Oh, well if you don't have a problem with it, neither do I! Let's groove baby!"

Problem solved.

I left in the middle of the sex scene. Which is a really bad sign.

See the thing is, I got no feeling that Stella was missing her groove. When we meet her, she's a successful single woman. Happy and content with her life. All her friends tell her she needs a man. So she decides that yes, her friends know her better than she does, and she needs a man.

Then she goes to Jamaica and meets Stud-Boy. The entire courting process is simply a series of close-ups on his various muscles. He's a big stud. She's a hot babe. It must be love.

How does it end? I don't know, and I don't care. I hope she got her groove and locked it up so she'd never lose it again and we won't have to deal with a sequel.

But there's more that was bad about this than the script and story. It felt like a student film. Badly lit, badly directed, badly edited, bad everything. Mr. Director seemed to simply set up the camera and say "Just walk around and do the scene. If you're in the shot when you speak, it's a bonus!"

I think the most important lesson we can learn from this is: Chick Films can be bad too.

Revenge of Stella's Groove gets 0 Babylons. None. Zip. Nada. Diddly. Your Mom. I've watched more riveting white noise.

Editor's Note:

I have never seen The Critic give a movie 0 Babylons. It might be one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Rated: Horrible
Directed By: An Idiot.
Starring: People Who Should Be Ashamed of Themselves.