| Save the Last Dance | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Thomas Carter |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Duane Adler |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Robbie Greenberg |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Mark Isham |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $13 million[1] |
| Box office | $131.5 million[1] |
Save the Last Dance is a 2001 Americandance film produced byMTV Films, directed byThomas Carter and distributed byParamount Pictures. The film starsJulia Stiles andSean Patrick Thomas as a teenageinterracial couple inChicago who work together to help Stiles's character train for aJuilliard Schooldance audition.[2]
Released theatrically in the United States on January 12, 2001, the film received mixed reviews from critics. It was a box-office success and grossed $131.5 million worldwide against a $13 million budget.
Adirect-to-video sequel,Save the Last Dance 2, was released in 2006.
Seventeen-year-old Sara Johnson, a promisingballet dancer in suburbanChicago, hopes to be admitted to theJuilliard School and implores her mother to attend the audition. She fails the audition and soon learns that her mother was killed in a car accident on her way to get to it.
Sara is wracked with guilt and gives up ballet. She moves to theSouth Side to live with her estranged father Roy, a relatively unsuccessful jazz musician, who plays the trumpet at nightclubs. Sara transfers to a majority-black high school, where she is one of a handful of white students. She quickly befriends Chenille Reynolds, a teenage single mother who is having relationship problems with her ex-boyfriend Kenny.
Chenille invites Sara to a dance club called Stepps, where she has her first experience dancing tohip hop rhythms. At Stepps, she dances with Derek, Chenille's brother. Derek is studious and responsible, something rare in his community. He dreams of attendingGeorgetown University and eventually becoming apediatrician. Derek likes Sara, and decides to help her develop her dancing abilities by incorporating more hip hop into her style.
Derek takes a reluctant Sara to theJoffrey Ballet and, afterward, she confides in him about her mother and her dreams. Later, they return to the club and amaze others with their dancing. While they are performing, Derek's ex-girlfriend Nikki rudely interrupts them and begins dancing with Derek, making Sara retreat to the bar. Malakai comes over to Sara and insults her by saying that there's no point for her trying to be with Derek.
Afterward, Derek returns to Sara and apologizes for pairing up with Nikki, reassuring to her that it was just dancing and that there's nothing between him and Nikki anymore. Sara accepts his apology and they return to Roy's apartment. Having achieved his dream of being accepted into Georgetown, Derek convinces Sara to follow her dreams of Juilliard; they eventually begin a romantic relationship.
At school, Nikki picks a fight with Sara during gym. At the clinic, Chenille tells Sara that while she did not approve of the fight, she can sympathize with Nikki's bitterness to a certain extent since Sara, a white girl, is "stealing" one of the few decent black boys at school. Because of this hurtful conversation, Sara and Chenille's friendship becomes strained, and Sara breaks up with Derek as the backlash becomes too much for her to handle.
Meanwhile, Derek deals with his friend Malakai, who is deeply involved in the gang lifestyle that Derek is trying to leave. Derek agrees to help Malakai execute adrive-by at the same time that Sara has an audition. Roy has a heart-to-heart talk with Sara and encourages her to go through with the audition.
After learning what Chenille said to Sara, Derek angrily confronts her about it, and explains that he dumped Nikki because she cheated on him. Remorseful, Chenille admits that what she did was wrong and apologizes. She also tells Derek that Sara did not want to break up with him, but her words hurt Sara to the point of feeling forced to.
Chenille also admits that she has been resentful for how Kenny has been treating her, including not helping her raise their son and not being a good boyfriend to her. She unintentionally took it out on Sara since she has been envious of her and Derek's relationship. Chenille encourages Derek to reconcile with Sara, admitting that she knows that Sara is in love with him. She warns Derek not to follow Malakai, knowing that he may lose his chance to attend Georgetown and his future if he is arrested. Derek meets up with Malakai and does his best to dissuade him from carrying out the attack, but Malakai refuses, causing Derek to turn on him.
Derek arrives at a crucial point in Sara's performance to offer her encouragement and moral support. Afterward, Sara is accepted into Juilliard and rekindles her relationship with Derek. Meanwhile, the drive-by is botched and Malakai is arrested. The film closes as Sara, Derek, Chenille, and their friends meet at Stepps to celebrate Sara's successful audition.
Julia Stiles landed the role of Sara after director Thomas Carter saw her dance scene in the 1999 film10 Things I Hate About You.[3] Lacking dance experience, Stiles prepared for her role by two months of intensive training for the ballet scenes and also rehearsing the choreography for the hip hop scenes.[3]Fatima Robinson was the film's hip hop choreographer.
The film debuted at number 1 at the North American box office, making $27.5 million in its opening weekend. Though the film had a 44% decline in earnings the following weekend, it still held the top spot for another week. It grossed $91,057,006 in the US alone and $131.7 million worldwide.[4]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has a 54% approval rating based on 100 reviews, with an average score of 5.5/10 and a consensus: "This teen romance flick feels like a predictable rehashing of other movies."[5]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 53 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[6]
Positive reviews praised the performances of Stiles, Thomas, and Washington.[7][8]Desson Howe ofThe Washington Post said that Stiles and Washington were appealing performers and concluded, "Thomas is the movie's best element. He puts so much authority in his performance, he makes this controversial romance seem like the best thing that could happen to anyone. That's no easy task."[9]
In a three-star review,Roger Ebert said that despite the film's clichéd story and romance, "the development is intelligent, the characters are more complicated than we expect, and the ending doesn't tie everything up in a predictable way."[10] Charles Taylor ofSalon wrote, "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."[11]
Writing for theChicago Tribune, Mark Caro said, "On paper the movie is full of cliches recently explored elsewhere...Yet in this case the outline is not the story; the people who inhabit it are," and in this way, "Save the Last Dance triumphantly passes the audition."[12]
Negative reviews criticized the editing style of dance scenes, the film's "after-school special"-like subplot, and the script for not delving enough into the issues of interracial relationships.[13] CriticWesley Morris wrote "the movie combines the worst of urbansploitation with the worst of teensploitation, and outfits them both in makings of the ultimate racial-crossover melodrama -- teen motherhood, deadbeat teen dads, drive-bys, a dangerous ex-girlfriend, speeches straight from the pages ofTerry McMillan."[13]Lisa Schwarzbaum ofEntertainment Weekly wrote, "director Thomas Carter is afraid to pump up the volume on its own interracial, hip hopRomeo and Juliet story, lest it challenge even one sedated viewer or disturb the peace."[14]
The dancing inSave the Last Dance was particularly criticized, derided as mediocre at best, and borderline offensive at worst. It was ranked with the poor dancing of similarly themed teen movies from the early 2000s such asHoney,You Got Served andStomp the Yard.[15] Its characterization of "hip hop dancing" as amounting to 'random fingerpointing and sitting awkwardly in a chair' has spawned viralmemes onsocial media.[15][16]
Additionally, the plot line suggesting that Sara's subpar audition was enough to earn admission to Juilliard has been mocked as "ludicrous". In a twenty-year retrospective of the movie, Karla Rodriguez ofComplex Magazine wrote:
We are sure Stiles worked really hard to learn the choreography for this scene and she deserves to be commended for her efforts—especially since the actress had no previous dance experience prior to the film and still did most of the dancing herself. But let's be honest: If it wasn't part of a movie, there's no way that dance number would have held up in real life and gotten her accepted into one of the most prestigious dance schools in the world. After all, the famous NYC school has an extremely low acceptance rate of 8%, beating out a majority of Ivy League schools. That figure makes the fine arts school harder to get into than Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.[15]
During aWeekend Update segment on the December 9, 2023 episode ofSaturday Night Live, comedianChloe Fineman did Stiles's dance from the end of the film with Stiles, who made a surprise cameo on the show.[17]
| Award | Category | Nominee | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black Reel Awards | Theatrical — Best Supporting Actress | Kerry Washington | Nominated | |
| Golden Reel Awards | Best Sound Editing — Music, Musical Feature Film | Michael T. Ryan | Nominated | |
| MTV Movie Awards | Best Kiss | Julia Stiles andSean Patrick Thomas | Won | |
| Best Dance Sequence | Nominated | |||
| Best Female Performance | Julia Stiles | Nominated | ||
| Breakthrough Male Performance | Sean Patrick Thomas | Won | ||
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Movie: Actress | Julia Stiles | Won | |
| Choice Movie: Breakout Star | Kerry Washington | Won | ||
| Choice Movie: Fight Scene | Julia Stiles andBianca Lawson | Won | ||
| Choice Movie: Drama | Nominated | |||
| Young Hollywood Awards | Standout Performance — Male | Sean Patrick Thomas | Won |
The film was released on DVD and VHS on June 19, 2001.[23] It was re-released on DVD on January 24, 2017.[24]
A sequel to the film, titledSave the Last Dance 2, was releaseddirect-to-video on October 10, 2006.
