BEFORE: Proceeding with the revised February plan - this would have been easier if Victor Garber had returned for "Legally Blonde 2", but he didn't - which is fine, but I could have connected straight to tomorrow's film if he had. This film gets me there, but I had this film on the "maybe" list, paired with "Waiting to Exhale", meaning that I don't have a physical or digital copy handy, but I'm aware of the film's reputation and I could probably find it on streaming somewhere if there's a sudden need to work it in. Well, the need is here, only now I've stranded "Waiting to Exhale", it doesn't connect to any other romance films left on the list. If I need it in 2023, I can probably find a way to work it in by adding more films - as I've said, next year's chain is a problem for another day, right now I only need to worry about putting together a chain that works for THIS year.
Regina King carries over from "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde".
THE PLOT: Stella is a highly successful, forty-something San Francisco stock broker who is persuaded by her colorful New York friend Delilah to take a well-deserved, first-class vacation to Jamaica.
AFTER: Well, I finally cracked the mystery and learned how Stella got her groove back - I suppose I've always wondered about that on some level. She went to Jamaica, that's how she did it. Whoops, sorry - SPOILER ALERT, she went to Jamaica and found romance with a man half her age. Yep, that'll do it, movie over, mystery solved, see you tomorrow. JK.
Obviously I'm way outside the intended demographic for this film - it's a female-oriented film, it's a black-oriented film - so you'd think maybe I'd be way out of my comfort zone, right? But it really shouldn't matter, romance is where you find it. I have been to Jamaica, so there's that. Heck, between three cruises, I've been all over the Caribbean, and I don't even swim or like beaches all that much. Our second cruise was the Eastern Caribbean, and the third cruise went WAY south, to Colombia and then the Panama Canal - so it must have been the first cruise, the honeymoon cruise. (Yeah, thanks to COVID I think our cruising days are over...). We were in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, the place with that big, shallow waterfall, and I think we took a bus tour of the island - beautiful place.
Anyway, very busy, very divorced 40-something mother Stella gets lost in a Jamaican tourism commercial, and before you know it, she and her New York friend are meeting up in a bar in a Montego Bay resort, and there's no shortage of older gentlemen dancing in their pajamas to hook up with. But Stella hesitates, and instead is joined at breakfast the next day by a twenty-something medical school drop-out named Winston Shakespeare who asks her too many personal questions - or is she just out of practice in the art of making conversation and flirting? He expresses interest in her and pursues her, and really, given the choice between the young buck and the older, flabby guys at the resort, it's hard to say she makes the wrong choice.
It's clear she's a thinker, not a fast mover - so there's a lot of consideration and navel-gazing before she enters into a relationship with this younger man. Eventually after she makes several trips to Jamaica, he comes to the U.S. to live with her, and then there's much more over-thinking going on when marriage is considered. Winston is a fine man, considerate lover and is also great when it comes to bonding with Stella's son, but it's a huge step to make - and a divorced person might be likely to take a long time when considering getting re-married, I get that. But if you wait too long, then you're not thinking about doing it, you're just not doing it. But at the same time, she's got career problems and her best friend is going through health issues.
The whole time I was thinking - what if Winston's only interested in coming to America for other reasons? You know, to get a green card and a better job, better life in America. Well, it turns out that's what happened to the author of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back", Terry McMillan. She wrote the book based on her own life and her own trip to Jamaica, where she met a man in her early twenties, and she married him. But six years later he told her he was gay, and only married her for that green card - and they got divorced. But that's in real life, not the movie.
The movie instead features one of those "darkest before the dawn" moments, where Winston decides that if Stella's not going to marry him, he's better off heading back to Jamaica to return to medical school. It's what his parents wanted him to do, anyway. But can the L.A. traffic keep him from getting to the airport long enough for Stella to catch up with him? What do YOU think?
Also starring Angela Bassett (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Taye Diggs (last seen in "Opening Night"), Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Spielberg"), Suzzanne Douglas, Michael J. Pagan, Sicily, Richard Lawson (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "Lucky"), Lee Weaver (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Glynn Turman (last seen in "The Way Back"), Phyllis Yvonne Stickney (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Denise Hunt, James Pickens Jr. (last seen in "Sphere"), Philip Casnoff (last seen in "The Post"), Lou Myers (last seen in "The Wedding Planner"), Art Metrano, Carl Lumbly (last seen in "A Cure for Wellness"), Phina Oruche, Victor Garber (last seen in "Legally Blonde")
RATING: 5 out of 10 bowls of Cocoa Puffs, eaten in bed
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