Save the Last Dance

For reasons that are entirely unclear after seeing it, “Save the Last Dance” did boffo box office in its opening weekend. I am not going to sit here and tell you that popular taste necessarily correlates with quality, but it is nevertheless a little hard to understand exactly what moviegoers perusing their theater schedules thought they were going to get in this ready-for-direct-to-video release. The movie has all the character and style of a made-for-TV release, and the sensibility of an Afterschool Special. In fact, a TV-series level of quality is evident in just about every aspect of the picture, which may be no surprise given that the people behind it all have TV backgrounds. (Note: I am not knocking TV. I like TV. There is a lot of good TV on the airwaves if you are willing to look for it.

In fact, there is a lot of TV that is better than this movie, hence, my puzzlement.) Following in the kitschy footsteps of such “dancer wannabe” pictures as “Flashdance” and, more recently, “Billy Elliot” (both of which are better movies), “Save the Last Dance” (whose title, by the way, has little to do with anything in the picture, so far as I can tell) has as its central character Sara Johnson, played by Julia Stiles (recently seen in “State and Main”). Sara is an aspiring dancer who wants to audition for Julliard, but when her divorced Mom is killed in a car wreck on the way to Sara’s rehearsal, Sara’s life is upended. She flunks the audition and winds up living in gritty inner-city Chicago with her jazz musician Dad (Kinney) and attending a nearly all Black high school. (As an aside, I am slightly affronted by the depiction Sara’s Dad as an uncool loser. The filmmakers seem to forget that jazz musicians were defining cool before hip-hop was invented. Just ask Miles Davis.) There, she makes some new friends, including the smart and handsome Derek (a decent Thomas), who volunteers to teach her some hip-hop dance moves so that Sara can fit in at “Steps,” the cool dance club the kids frequent.

I have to admit that there is some low-rent amusement to be had with the scenes of Derek trying to teach Sara “attitude,” but it is not enough to support the picture. I also find the notion that a classically trained ballerina would have trouble keeping up to be a little naive. That’s like saying that Evgeny Kissin can’t play jazz because he’s not cool enough (trust me, he can, but only in private). I do give credit to “Save the Last Dance” for allowing a romance to blossom between Derek and Sara. They even kiss! Compared to the non-romance between the African-American guy and the white girl in the recently released “Finding Forrester,” this is a major breakthrough. The romance may be rather chaste, but at least it’s there onscreen. I will even credit the script with one or two worthwhile insights into a Black woman’s view of Sara, a white girl who comes into town and takes up with one of the few local men with any real promise. (Of course, the picture later backs off from this provocative stance, in favor of a more romance friendly sentiment.) But the movie treads lightly in those areas. It’s really about dance scenes, and in that regard is not up to par.

Stiles has a sweet screen presence and seems to be a fair actress, but I don’t think anyone would mistake her for a prima ballerina. The movie uses stand-ins so blatantly in the dance scenes that it looks like Stiles is doing none of the dancing at all (even if she is). One would think that by now they could have figured out a way to make this look more realistic or at least have hired a dancer who can act (or an actress who can dance). During the course of “Save the Last Dance,” Sara must come to grips with her feelings about her mother’s death and renew her dream of a dance career. She is encouraged in these Psychology-101 level pursuits by Derek, who has his own problems to contend with, most specifically in the form of his headed-for-trouble buddy Malakai (Starr, probably the most vivid presence onscreen), who wants Derek to stay true to his street roots. As one might expect, Derek and Sara help each other discover the strength to pursue their dreams. The climax of the picture (like the other dance pictures mentioned above) is Sara’s second audition for Julliard, during which she is supposed to wow the judges with her clever incorporation of hip-hop style into her modern dance routine. Paging Jennifer Beals, please. Maybe we are all a little spoiled, but this finale is a terrible anti-climax. The routine just isn’t that good, nor the dancing (doubled or not) that convincing. Dramatically, “Save the Last Dance" never rises above the conventional, and, worse yet, it doesn’t even offer the guilty choreographic pleasures that this type of picture should. (1/27/2001)