Save the Last Dance (2001)
July 7, 2023 11:18 AM - Subscribe
A white midwestern girl moves to Chicago, where her new boyfriend is a black teen from the South Side with a rough, semi-criminal past.
Sara (Julia Stiles) is moved from a small Midwestern town to the south side of Chicago when her mother dies in a car accident, and must live with her father. She soon falls for an African American teenager (Sean Patrick Thomas) at her new high school and he has less than an idyllic past. They share a love for dance (ballet and hip hop respectively) and together they tackle the problems that go with an interracial relationship.
Kimberley Jones: Much of the humor in Save the Last Dance comes from the usual fish-out-of-water jokes (watch the hapless Sara try to fit into the ghetto!), which is a pretty one-note kind of comedy. But while the jokes are mostly uninspired, the dancing is anything but. Helmed by director (and central Texas native) Thomas Carter (Swing Kids) and choreographer Fatima, the dance sequences simply thrill. Bodies tend to respond in Pavlovian fashion, even to movies: Romantic scenes set mouths watering, erotic scenes stimulate another region altogether. Here, any hint of dancing gets feet itching to tap, hips aching to shake. When Sara's classmates hit the downtown club Steps, they make it look so sexy, so sweaty, it's all you can do to bolt yourself to the seat and not toward the door and the nearest dance floor. Save the Last Dance deserves major points for maturely handling challenging material like teen interracial romance, especially when compared to the embarrassingly tame proceedings in another new release, Finding Forrester (which also features a young black man and white woman).
Wesley Morris: Eventually, they fall in love. He gives her his culture. She gives him her heart. It hardly seems fair. But the movie never condescends to play cultural- exchange games. It's simply a bid to win Stiles the black vote. Its pseudo- progressive stance on interracial dating is betrayed by its glaring uncoolness and formal stupidity, both of which equate to a sort of backhanded racism. Why do the photography and editing act a fool whenever the needle drops on some hip-hop R&B record? (And why is the hottest club for the fake-ID crowd spinning jams that were hot three years ago?)
The movie means well -- or does it? We're told the bare essentials about Derrick's family life (you know, Momma's a crackhead, etc). But how the outspoken, ill-named Chenille (Kerry Washington) could be his sister is a case for the gene police. Bound for Georgetown, Derrick is meant to be a testament to a young brother shedding his hoodlum past. It's hard to embrace that, though, when his thug life, embodied by hip-hop bully Fredro Starr, is sitting right across from him in the school caf.
Rita Kempley: "Save the Last Dance" takes its cues from the musical dramas of the '70s, but this otherwise engaging young-adult romance never quite catches Saturday night fever. Then again, 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.
Trailer
Sara (Julia Stiles) is moved from a small Midwestern town to the south side of Chicago when her mother dies in a car accident, and must live with her father. She soon falls for an African American teenager (Sean Patrick Thomas) at her new high school and he has less than an idyllic past. They share a love for dance (ballet and hip hop respectively) and together they tackle the problems that go with an interracial relationship.
Kimberley Jones: Much of the humor in Save the Last Dance comes from the usual fish-out-of-water jokes (watch the hapless Sara try to fit into the ghetto!), which is a pretty one-note kind of comedy. But while the jokes are mostly uninspired, the dancing is anything but. Helmed by director (and central Texas native) Thomas Carter (Swing Kids) and choreographer Fatima, the dance sequences simply thrill. Bodies tend to respond in Pavlovian fashion, even to movies: Romantic scenes set mouths watering, erotic scenes stimulate another region altogether. Here, any hint of dancing gets feet itching to tap, hips aching to shake. When Sara's classmates hit the downtown club Steps, they make it look so sexy, so sweaty, it's all you can do to bolt yourself to the seat and not toward the door and the nearest dance floor. Save the Last Dance deserves major points for maturely handling challenging material like teen interracial romance, especially when compared to the embarrassingly tame proceedings in another new release, Finding Forrester (which also features a young black man and white woman).
Wesley Morris: Eventually, they fall in love. He gives her his culture. She gives him her heart. It hardly seems fair. But the movie never condescends to play cultural- exchange games. It's simply a bid to win Stiles the black vote. Its pseudo- progressive stance on interracial dating is betrayed by its glaring uncoolness and formal stupidity, both of which equate to a sort of backhanded racism. Why do the photography and editing act a fool whenever the needle drops on some hip-hop R&B record? (And why is the hottest club for the fake-ID crowd spinning jams that were hot three years ago?)
The movie means well -- or does it? We're told the bare essentials about Derrick's family life (you know, Momma's a crackhead, etc). But how the outspoken, ill-named Chenille (Kerry Washington) could be his sister is a case for the gene police. Bound for Georgetown, Derrick is meant to be a testament to a young brother shedding his hoodlum past. It's hard to embrace that, though, when his thug life, embodied by hip-hop bully Fredro Starr, is sitting right across from him in the school caf.
Rita Kempley: "Save the Last Dance" takes its cues from the musical dramas of the '70s, but this otherwise engaging young-adult romance never quite catches Saturday night fever. Then again, 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.
Trailer
Videos of people making fun of the final dance never get old. Example
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:21 PM on July 7, 2023
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:21 PM on July 7, 2023
Say what you will but this movie has at least given us the demi-immortal Onion article "Dancer Risks Everything".
posted by Hypatia at 8:40 PM on July 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Hypatia at 8:40 PM on July 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
I remember watching and enjoying this movie around when it came out. The scene that stuck most in my memory was Chenille telling Sara that Derrick was "one of the good ones" and noting that Black girls had to compete with white girls for him. A short scene but I think it was the first time I saw a film where someone mentioned that dynamic.
posted by brainwane at 9:40 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by brainwane at 9:40 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
This might have been my favorite movie for a hot minute. Julia Stiles was so pretty but she also struggled to fit in at school (like me). brainwane, I remember that scene too. I think that scene is one of the things that really transformed this from another teen romantic drama movie to an actual Film, but maybe I'm biased.
The line that always stuck with me is when ?Nikki? says to Sara, "You always in my way!" and Sara responds, "I'm only in your way when it comes to Derrick!" For some reason, any time for the past two decades that someone says I'm in their way, this line goes through my head.
posted by Night_owl at 7:27 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
The line that always stuck with me is when ?Nikki? says to Sara, "You always in my way!" and Sara responds, "I'm only in your way when it comes to Derrick!" For some reason, any time for the past two decades that someone says I'm in their way, this line goes through my head.
posted by Night_owl at 7:27 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I worked on a couple of the DVD extras—the choreographers were interesting, especially Fatima Robinson.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:46 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ideefixe at 8:46 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by Carillon at 11:20 AM on July 7, 2023 [3 favorites]