This is escapism, pure and simple. And few know the power of such purity better than Terry McMillan.

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.

The filmmakers go to obvious pains to add a bit of nutritive value to their sweet, frothy confection.

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.

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.

Rarely have we seen black love be this sensual.

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.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back tries its best to turn a paperback romance into a relationship worth making a movie about, but fails.

A glossy, attractive, ultimately empty soap opera that -- despite being based on a true story -- never seems remotely plausible.

This lushly produced, lightweight romance embraces every cliche of the genre without so much as an ironic shrug.

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.

This is Harlequin Romance land, and the film squeaks by as long as it's content to watch its lovers throwing off sparks.

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.

Buffed and waxed to within an inch of its life, Stella registers as more of a sequence of slick commercials than an actual drama.