Next stop, Hollywood

Charles Taylor dismisses the 'authentic' pose of indie-hit 'Next Stop, Wonderland' and defends the glossier good-time gal movies 'Dance With Me' and 'How Stella Got Her Groove Back'.

By Charles Taylor

Sep 3, 1998 | About an hour into "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," Stella (Angela Bassett) and her 20-year-old lover, Winston (Taye Diggs), walk out of a multiplex and run into Stella's snooty sister Angela (Suzzanne Douglas). Angela, her husband and another upper-middle-class couple have just seen a picture that befits their station in life, something suitably adult and tasteful, and she's rhapsodizing about how beautiful it was, how sad, and didn't Stella jeest lo-o-ove it? Actually, Stella tells her, she and Winston were seeing a low-brow comedy playing on another screen. Appalled, her sister asks, "Stella, how could you?"

Nobody has actually asked me, "How could you?" when I've told them that I had a ball at "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and at "Dance With Me." But I've seen the surprise, maybe even the suspicion, that my response provokes. Neither "Stella" nor "Dance With Me" is the sort of picture that "serious" critics or moviegoers are supposed to occupy themselves with. They're too Hollywood, too blatantly commercial. The type of picture that critics and discerning moviegoers are supposed to get behind is something like Brad Anderson's indie comedy "Next Stop, Wonderland." Quirky and "realistic" in a way that's meant to seem more honest than Hollywood gloss, "Next Stop, Wonderland" has, accordingly, received glowing reviews. And yet it's terrible, a mix of warmed-over urban whimsy and life-lesson-style "observations." "Wonderland" is emblematic of how indie filmmakers have eschewed the slickness of Hollywood without finding anything as satisfying to replace it.

Part of the basic appeal of movies, the chance to indulge our daydreams of luxury and romance and glamour, is also one of the things that has long caused "educated" moviegoers to look down on the mass audience. But surrendering to those fantasies for a few hours isn't the same thing as confusing them with reality. "Stella" and "Dance With Me" are loaded with the sort of clichis and melodrama that indie movies have gone out of their way to avoid. But they've been put together with a mixture of confidence and eagerness to please that keeps them lively and engaging. They're not embarrassed about polishing up the old conventions, and audiences don't appear to be embarrassed about responding to them.

All three of these movies are powered by the appeal of the female stars -- Angela Bassett in "Stella," Vanessa L. Williams in "Dance With Me" and Hope Davis in "Next Stop, Wonderland." Davis' appeal is different from that of the other two, both of whom are born movie stars and just as exotic as movie stars have always seemed. Davis is a heightened version of someone you might already know. I'd wager money that everyone in their 30s has a friend not too different from Erin, the nurse she plays in "Wonderland," someone torn between her desire for a lover and her unwillingness to change her life to accommodate one. Erin is beginning to learn how to savor her loneliness, and that both scares and attracts her. You'd have to be a hermit to see Davis here and not understand why she strikes a chord in audiences. Anyone who can look perfectly comfortable dining out with only a book for company is some sort of new archetypal heroine. Davis spends much of the movie reacting, primarily to the guys who answer the personal ad Erin's meddling mother (Holland Taylor) has placed for her. She's so good at getting the audience on her wavelength that you can tell who's not going to make the cut just by the way she raises her chin or subtly arches an eyebrow. Davis manages to be both prickly and pliable here, a romantic heroine with no time for the bullshit of romance and no intention of dumbing herself down for anything.

But good as Davis is, she'd really shine if Anderson weren't so style-phobic. Like too many young filmmakers, Anderson seems to equate honesty with choppy editing, bad lighting (so harsh in a couple of shots you can see the pancake on Davis' face) and herky-jerky camera movements. And what's the reward for enduring this? A picture that doesn't even rise to the cleverness of a good sitcom. Indie cachet has gone a long way to help movies that are utterly conventional. (Would art-house audiences have made a hit out of an entertaining sudser like "Sliding Doors" if it were an American studio film?) And while indie movies have also helped unconventional actors -- people like Martin Donovan, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Kevin Corrigan, Chris Eigeman -- there are actors indie movies aren't helping at all. Sure, Davis runs the risk of getting smoothed down in Hollywood movies, but could they be worse than "Wonderland" or "The Daytrippers" or "The Myth of Fingerprints"? Gems are gems no matter where they are, but cheap settings never enhance them.