A refreshingly friendly view of a romance between people of different pigmentation, an area where more respectable pictures still wimp out.
Save the Last Dance (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:30
Fresh:17
Rotten:13
Average Rating:5.4/10
Consensus: This teen romance flick feels like a predictable rehashing of other movies.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for violence, sexual content, language and brief drug references
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Jan 12, 2001 Wide
Box Office: $90,696,166
Synopsis:
Sara's life is devoted to dance -- she wants nothing more than to make it into New York's famous Julliard School. But when tragedy strikes and she loses her mom, her hopes are dashed and she buries...
Sara's life is devoted to dance -- she wants nothing more than to make it into New York's famous Julliard School. But when tragedy strikes and she loses her mom, her hopes are dashed and she buries her dreams of ever attending the country's best dance school.
Without her Mom to support her, Sara moves to the tough streets of Chicago's South side to live with her Dad -- a down on his luck jazz musician who she barely knows. Her new school's a totally different world from the small town she grew up in, but Sara's quick comebacks and sassy attitude earn her the quick respect and friendship of straight-talking Chenille. But it's Chenille's brother, Derek, the cool and good-looking star of the school, who grabs Sara's attention. He plays it up tough, but he also has the smarts and a plan to go to medical school.
When Chenille takes Sara to Steppes, the neighborhood hang, she gets her first taste of hip-hop -- and Derek's the one to show her the moves. When they discover they share a passion for dance, they discover that there's something deeper going on -- a passion for each other. But they soon find out the hard way that they must not only overcome their own differences, but the resentment and bad blood of their friends and family. As the school year goes on, the couple finds that their affection and devotion to each other could ultimately threaten Derek's hopes for a better life and Sara's rediscovery of her dance.
Yet against all the odds they overcome the obstacles to their dreams, and discover that ultimately the only person you have to be is...yourself.
Starring: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Terry Kinney, Fredro Starr
Starring: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Terry Kinney, Fredro Starr, Kerry Washington, Bianca Lawson
Director: Thomas Carter
Director: Thomas Carter
Producer: Robert W. Cort, David Madden
Screenwriter: Duane Adler, Cheryl Edwards
Composer: Mark Isham
Studio: Paramount Pictures
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Reviews for Save the Last Dance
It pays knowing respect not only to high school social politics, but also to racial politics among today’s young people.
The intent is a feel-good film, sort of an American version of Billy Elliot and I didn't believe a minute of it.
Squanders nice performances by Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas by confining them and the supporting cast to cookie-cutter roles and hackneyed inner-city subplots.
The high school repartee has snap, crackle and pop, but the romantic drama is strictly cornflakes that have been left in the milk too long.
An admirably heartfelt story with more on its mind than the glory of self-expression.
Stiles and Thomas are good together, in a warm and fuzzy, as opposed to hot and heavy, sort of way.
This movie would sooner see Derrick help Sara fulfill her Juilliard destiny than acknowledge how hard he worked to get into G-Town. It's profoundly square screen writing.
This skin-deep MTV Films production is more about promoting soundtrack sales than social causes.
The playing of ballet against hip-hop gets more than a little corny, but the charismatic young performers make the corn work.
For all its dumb clichés it offers the basic appeal of teen movies: the pleasure of watching kids be kids, acting as they do among themselves instead of how parents and teachers expect them to act.
The setup promises cliches, but the development is intelligent, the characters are more complicated than we expect, and the ending doesn't tie everything up in a predictable way.
A spirited, dirty dance between the polished inauthenticity of Hollywood romance-musicals and hip-hop's central tenet: keeping it real.
It's far from tepid teen fare, thanks largely to the sweet chemistry between up-and-comer Sean Patrick Thomas and leading lady Julia Stiles.
The film has a lot of surface complication but no attention span; it's a centimeter deep.
A teen romance that generates enough honest emotion to play against the predictability of its finish.
Latest News for Save the Last Dance
February 13, 2008:
Total Recall: It's a Dance Dance Revolution
Audiences have been historically dismissive of all the critical contempt, pushing dozens of fancy-footed extravaganzas to the upper reaches of the box-office charts.
For this... More...
July 11, 2007:
Mary Elizabeth Winstead Set to "Make It Happen" In Burlesque Flick
If you watched "Live Free or Die Hard" and thought, "Gee, what I'd really like to see is Mary Elizabeth Winstead with less clothing and more dancing," this... More...
August 09, 2006:
Critical Consensus: A Brave New "World," A "Step" Down, And No Screenings for "Pulse" and "Zoom"
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August 10, 2005:
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