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Sharps & Flats M O V I E S Home Movies Monicagate: The movie 54 Slums of Beverly Hills Home Movies |
NEXT STOP, HOLLYWOOD | PAGE 1, 2
Perhaps the nicest thing about "Dance With Me" is that, for all its blunders, it takes care to show off its leads, Vanessa L. Williams and the Latin American music star Chayanne. When their two sets of doe eyes meet -- his dark and bedroomy, hers bright and sparkly -- you know they're a match. "Dance With Me" has a hokey setup (he's a Cuban immigrant who can dance only when he feels the music; she's a dance instructor who can only follow the steps) that pays off in the dance sequences.When Chayanne leads Williams out on the floor at a salsa club, the scene is built around her responses as her nervousness gives way to delight. By the time they're moving around the club, switching from partner to partner, the combination of the dancing and the music has hit an exhilarating pitch. Dancing has become so rare in the movies that the pleasure of the dance sequences isn't much diminished by director Randa Haines' clumsiness (or the silliness of the rest of the movie). Jane Krakowski (of "Ally McBeal," and a veteran of Broadway musicals) gets to dance a duet with Chayanne that's an airy delight. When he lifts her, it looks so effortless he might simply be guiding her as she levitates into the air. And the big climax -- an international dance competition in Las Vegas -- has built-in suspense: Can Williams and her partner combine the fieriness of Latin dancing with the precision required in professional competition? The dancing in this sequence (Williams is partnered by Rick Venezuela, one of the film's assistant choreographers) is both rigidly controlled and knockabout passionate, and it's thrilling to watch. "Dance With Me" is part of a tradition of pictures that Hollywood has all but abandoned: the casual vehicle designed to bring out the personalities of performers who aren't straight actors. Movies should make a place for personalities as well as actors. Chayanne makes me think that there are probably dozens of singers and dancers and rappers (maybe even some athletes) who could be wonderful in the right part. He turns out to have a charming screen presence -- good-looking, good-natured and sexy without any preening or swagger. When Williams catches sight of his eyes batting dreamily at her from the sidelines of the dance floor, it's the purest seduction. And Williams, in addition to being one of the most beautiful women in movies, gets to show that she's a sensational dancer, and she keeps suggesting she's more of an actress than she's gotten a chance to show. Williams has a way of investing the blandest lines with edge and insinuation that gives her character real backbone. Yet she gives herself over to the movie's melodrama, too. She gets to suffer and triumph in the climax, as she dances with her sleazy ex while dreaming of Chayanne. It's a big, juicy diva's moment, and Williams seizes it for everything it's worth. "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (adapted from Terry McMillan's novel by McMillan and Ron Bass) is basically an updated, upbeat version of '40s women's weepers. Whoopi Goldberg as Bassett's best friend and the wonderful Regina King as her sister (not the snooty one) who can't stop gossiping even when a patient is being loaded into the back of her ambulance, are hilarious in the wisecracking-broad roles that once would have been played by Helen Broderick or Eve Arden or Joan Blondell. No one is likely to mistake Bassett for Joan Crawford or Susan Hayward, though. She's not into noble suffering, or sacrifice, thank God. "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (the title plays off the same salacious double-entendre Madonna made with "Into the Groove") is almost shamefully enjoyable and satisfying because it has no time for the moralism that dogged the women's movies of the past, and continues to dog too many romantic fantasies today. The movie takes its cue from Bassett's no-nonsense sexiness. Stella meets young Winston on an impulsive Jamaican vacation and wastes no time falling into bed with him. And when he moves to San Francisco to be with her, she tells anyone and everyone who criticizes her that's it's none of their business. It's also refreshing that being a mom doesn't cancel out Stella's sexuality. (Her relationship with her pre-adolescent son is one of the nicest details of the movie.) In "Stella," sex and food and clothes and family life have all been given a sensuous comfort. "Stella" is, unapologetically, a woman's sex fantasy where the sex appeal comes as much from the perks of Stella's yummy lifestyle as it does from Taye Diggs' butt (held in an utterly gratuitous nude shot for the women in the audience to drool over). Everything here -- clothes, furniture, tropical vacations -- looks lush and expensive. It's too bad that director Kevin Rodney Sullivan's idea of classiness seems to have come from commercials, though conspicuous consumption is the key to the movie's appeal. There's been some tut-tutting over the materialism of the black women's movies, which strikes me as well-intentioned condescension. It's as if years of struggle for basic human rights should have made black people above all that. But why shouldn't black audiences get to enjoy the fantasies of luxurious living that have been aimed at white audiences for years? It's a drag that Stella's snooty sister has been given a white husband as a sign of her snobbishness. But "Stella" is a fantasy open to all comers. There's no ax-grinding going on. It's so easy to slip into because on a very basic level, it's so familiar. Years of movies have taught us to enjoy the sort of plush daydreams it specializes in. Both "Stella" and "Dance With Me" show that there's still plenty of juice in
star power and in old-movie glamour. And the fact that they find that glamour
in black and Latino faces is cause for celebration. Neither one deserves
mention in the same breath with the top-notch entertainments of the
summer, "Out of Sight," "The Mask of Zorro" and "Ever After." But when
you leave them, you know you've been to the movies.
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