Movie Review - Juanita (2019)

This film is an adaptation of Dancing on the Edge of the Roof, a novel by Sheila Williams, published back in 2002. It's about a 40-something, African-American woman who decides to run away from home. Her home consists of herself as a single parent to two adult children and a grand-child whom she frequently has to babysit. She loves her children and grandchild, but her children don't take responsibility for their lives. They mooch off their mother and take her for granted. She's also disillusioned because she has a third adult child in prison. Between them and her grueling job as a nurse, she's tired of her life in near poverty in Columbus, Ohio.

Fueling her desire to run away is her active imagination. In the novel, she's a Don Quixote type, although not to the insane degree. In the novel, she gets lost in books, envisioning herself out on adventures. Her whole issue is that she's reluctant to actually venture out and do any of them. The film is less pronounced, but she does bear some resemblance to Walter Mitty. However, this film doesn't have the budget of Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), so the imagination of the titular character is limited as to what she envisions.

Alfre Woodard (Desperate Housewives and St. Elsewhere) stars as Juanita Louis, a 42-year-old woman living in Ohio. She's a single mom who works as a nurse and has three children who are grown, at least 19 or older. She's sick and tired of all of them, at least the ones who aren't yet in prison. Her only joy comes from sharing marijuana joints with her patients. Some of whom are terminal. Obviously, that doesn't last for long. She decides to buy a bus ticket and head west. For some reason, which is unclear, she tells the ticket agent to make her destination Butte, Montana. It's probably so that the joke about pronouncing Butte can be made. It's pronounced BYÜT.

Blair Underwood (In Treatment and L.A. Law) plays a version of himself. He exists as sexual temptation but solely in the mind of Juanita. He's a romantic fantasy, a beautiful, black man, practically naked, adoring and wanting to pleasure her. Underwood is 50-something but still is undeniably attractive and more than eye-candy for Juanita or anyone. However, he represents how her fantasies aren't enough. She still needs something in real life that's perhaps different and hopefully better than anything she's encountered or envisioned.

Adam Beach (Flags of Our Fathers and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) co-stars as Jess Gardiner, a Native American, restaurant owner and chef in Paper Moon, Montana. Paper Moon is presumably some place north of Butte near the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. He's a war veteran who suffers from PTSD and used to be an alcoholic, but now is working on creating fine, French cuisine for his restaurant, almost to the detriment of attracting a wide-range of customers. His sister and niece work at the restaurant.

What could have been a black woman version of Walter Mitty then turns into what could be loosely described as an economic-inverse of How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998). The titular character of that 1998 film was a wealthy woman who could afford a first-class plane ticket to Jamaica. Juanita can barely afford a bus ticket and to get to Paper Moon, she has to hitchhike with a truck-driver named Peaches, played by Ashlie Atkinson (BlacKkKlansman).

The problem is that How Stella Got Her Groove Back is over two hours. This film is only 90 minutes, so this film doesn't have the time to build the romance between Juanita and Jess. The film does its best to develop the character of Jess, giving glimpses into his rural existence and his Native American culture. Yet, the romance between the two is very rushed and comes across at the end as a casual thing. Beach's performance tries to sell that he's fallen in love, but the film doesn't give him enough on which to hang this performance. By the end, it does just come off as a fling and of no real consequence.

A better film that depicts a romance between an out-of-town person who comes to Montana and falls in love with a Native American portrayed by an actor who's also of the First Nations is Big Eden (2001). It's also two hours and it gives enough breath for the two characters to fall in love or at least for those two actors to depict those emotions. This movie breezes through or skips over beats that it shouldn't have. We blink and basically the romance here is over.

It's arguable that the movie isn't about the romance. It's arguable that the movie is simply about Juanita finding a new sense of freedom or independence. It's arguable that the movie is about her simply starting over and beginning anew. Maybe it's about her learning to be by herself. The final shot does end that way, not her with anybody, even her potential love interest. The movie though never sells me on that as a satisfying ending.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 30 mins.

Available on Netflix.