Running time: 112 minutes
Starring: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick
Thomas, Terry Kinney, Fredro Starr, Bianca Lawson, Kerry Washington
Rating 4 out of 10
Save The Last Dance tries to shake some life back into the dance movie. Unfortunately, it's no Dirty Dancing. Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas are not Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, and audiences will not be leaving the theatre having had the time of their lives.The story concerns Sara (Stiles), a retired ballet dancer who moves to inner-city Chicago to live with her absent father Roy (Kinney). There, she falls in love with handsome classmate Derek (Thomas), a gifted student who loves to strut his funky stuff at a local hip-hop hangout.
Sara and Derek grow close, united by their passion for dance, but families and friends are opposed to the relationship. Derek's old flame Nikki (Lawson) and his best friend Malakai (Starr) scheme to drive a wedge between the young lovers. Vilified from every angle, Sara and Derek realise they must make difficult decisions if the romance is to survive.
Save The Last Dance pitches the inter-racial relationship like some modern-day Romeo and Juliet.
Stiles and Thomas have little to do in the way of acting. There are a couple of moments of emotion, otherwise the film is steady and sluggish. For a film like this to work, there needs to be a potent sexual energy between the leads. Here, neither actor shows interest in the other.
The crowd-pleasing denouement - Sara's audition for Juilliard - is right out of the Flashdance Handbook Of Grandstand Finales.
Save The Last Dance should play strongly, for the first week at least, to the key MTV demographic of teenage girls. But it's difficult to see anyone else being interested. To echo the title of the first song on the soundtrack: You Don't Really Want Some.
