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Save The Last
Dance
 Release
Date: January 12, 2001
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director: Thomas Carter
Screenwriter: Duane Adler, Cheryl Edwards
Starring: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Terry Kinney,
Genre: Drama, Teen Romance
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for violence, sexual content, language, and brief
drug references)
Plot Summary: With her dreams of becoming a
professional ballerina decimated by the accidental death of her mother, Sara
Johnson (Stiles) is forced to move from her quiet Vermont town to her father's
ghetto apartment on the south side of Chicago. The stark urban environment's
contrast of race and class compound Sara's loss and her misplaced guilt, which
are both exacerbated by the fact that her mother had been en route to her dance
performance at the time of her death. But when she meets Derek (Sean Patrick
Thomas), a popular black student with a passion for hip hop and a future
brighter than his troubled past, her repressed ambition and sorrow are released
through a revitalized interest in the cathartic and expressive power of dance.
Review By John Barker
 
- Zero stars: See it and die!
The eminent US Weekly called this film "A slammin’
combo of dance and drama", while respected critic Roger Ebert had this
to comment "Thumbs up! An entertainment movie with thought and
intelligence behind it." Well, this slander cannot be allowed to
proliferate, so to reiterate on Mr. Ebert’s comments; "Thumbs down! A
boring movie with stupidity and inadequacy behind it." This sentiment
conveys my feelings about one of the worst films produced in the last ten years.
Not since viewing Joel Schummacher’s Batman
and Robin has a cinematic experience been so painful. The plot of this
already forgotten filmic endeavor starts with an angst ridden pre-pubescent
named Sara played by Julia Stiles, who is on her way to become a world class
ballerina when (shock horror) her mother is killed in a car accident. This
causes Sara to fail her audition for one of America’s finest dance schools.
After the loss of her mother she must move away to live with her estranged
father (Terry Kinney) who lives in Chicago’s dystopian South Side.
As the South Side area is populated mostly by
African-American’s, Sara feels alienated until she meets Derek (Sean Patrick
Thomas), who as luck would have it is a skilled hip-hop dancer and takes Sara
under his wing to show her ‘the moves’. This relationship, surprisingly,
turns into a fully fledged romance and the couple must face the inherent racism
of their peers and also shrug off some of Derek’s gang affiliations.
The sub-plot which initiates the aforementioned
criminal activities that Derek’s friends undertake feels purely added to
appease the young-black male audience that craves this kind of mindless
violence. "A couple of drive-by’s to keep the teenagers happy",
I hear the director say. However it does mean we get to hear the phrase "Bust
a cap in your arse", not just once, but twice.
For those of you that are excited by that
stunning scripting there is more in store with screenwriters Duane Adler and
Cheryl Edwards using every cliché in the book to convey the ‘realism’ of
black American culture. It feels like they sat down and watched Billy Elliot
and Boyz ‘N’ The Hood and thought ‘Here’s a good idea we’ll
write a screenplay’. Hopefully, neither of this deadly screenwriting duo will
ever put pen to paper again.
But this is not the least of your problems as a
viewer, as the two leads, and for that matter the whole cast give career low
performances saturated with verbal diarrhea and bubonic characterization.
Nothing can save this film from the doldrums of Hollywood trash, and its plea to
be considered as some kind of post-modern musical is simply laughable.
After the films credits roll you feel that the
last dance shouldn’t have been saved and wish, if not beg, for someone to save
the last bullet; just to relieve you of the agonising pain your psyche will
experience while watching this terrible film. |
