How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Metascore
56 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 23 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
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  1. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: David Ehrenstein
    80
    This is escapism, pure and simple. And few know the power of such purity better than Terry McMillan.
  2. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    80
    Stella may be frothy and paper-thin, but it's also another great success for star Angela Bassett, who transforms the film into an infomercial for her considerable abilities.
  3. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Russell Smith
    78
    The filmmakers go to obvious pains to add a bit of nutritive value to their sweet, frothy confection.
  4. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    75
    Whether you regard Stella's getting her groove back as a feminist battle cry or as a silly wish-fulfillment fantasy, the movie delivers guilt-free escapism about pretty people having wicked-hot fun in pretty places.
  5. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    For once, with How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Hollywood offers a love story that concentrates on the simple nuances of the romance rather than smothering us in an overly- melodramatic narrative featuring old boyfriends, jealousy, and hard-to-swallow misunderstandings.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    70
    The movie, adapted by Terry McMillan from her semi-autobiographical novel, is pointedly boundary-breaking in its positive portrayal of a May-September relationship between a younger man and an older woman.
  7. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: Allison Samuels
    70
    Rarely have we seen black love be this sensual.
  8. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    63
    How Stella Got Her Groove Back tries its best to turn a paperback romance into a relationship worth making a movie about, but fails.
  9. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    60
    This lushly produced, lightweight romance embraces every cliche of the genre without so much as an ironic shrug.
  10. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    60
    A glossy, attractive, ultimately empty soap opera that -- despite being based on a true story -- never seems remotely plausible.
  11. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Rita Kempley
    60
    Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan, a television veteran making his feature film debut, has fluffed up this undemanding material much as one would a pillow. But pillows have their place and so do girlfriend movies.
  12. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Sarah Kerr
    60
    This is Harlequin Romance land, and the film squeaks by as long as it's content to watch its lovers throwing off sparks.
  13. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    Bassett and Diggs are appealing as the slightly odd couple, but the movie rambles on too long.
  14. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    50
    I'm not denying that a 40-year- old woman might be self-conscious about going around with someone this young. But the subject isn't interesting or provocative enough to sustain an entire movie.
  15. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Venise Wagner
    50
    It's a fun movie - full of laughs and touching moments.
  16. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    50
    The movie meanders on and on, like a bad sexual dream, until you finally wake up mumbling: Stella, please: leave that groove thang alone.
  17. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Gary Dauphin
    50
    It's not a very well-made movie, but Stella's many limitations will probably be a side issue among its target audience, irrelevant next to those repeating images of Angela being so rich and beautiful and black.
  18. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    50
    Buffed and waxed to within an inch of its life, Stella registers as more of a sequence of slick commercials than an actual drama.
  19. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    50
    All the comedy, tragedy, and various obstacles to romance seem to have been contrived to divert the story from its tendency toward pulp erotica.
  20. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    42
    Bassett's natural dramatic fierceness, so powerful when incited to action, is at odds with the knee-weakening sexual surrender required by the story.
  21. Empire
    Reviewed by: Angie Errigo
    40
    Director Sullivan lingers too long in every photogenic location and drags out every incident as if he's making six episodes of a not very sparkling serial.
  22. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    40
    This upscale Harlequin fantasy film works much the same terrain as Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, a '50s weepy about an affair between an older woman and a younger man, though without an iota of its wit or intelligence.
  23. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    40
    Like "Waiting to Exhale" except more so, film jerks from scene to scene with little sense of rhythm, continuity or dramatic shaping.

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