I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Crappy film

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Save the Last Dance is a film I can put on anytime, regardless of my mood, and enjoy it. The Thomas Carter film from 2001, is not a light film by any means, dealing with race relations and the death of a young girl's mother and her drive to overcome the associated guilt she feels as responsible for her mother's death. Starring Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas, Save the Last Dance is one I enjoy because its subject matter never loses its relevance, and the human emotions are presented in a very real way affecting the audiences with every viewing. Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles), has always dreamed of being a ballerina, her mother has always been wholly supportive of her dreams, which is why it was so important to Sara that her mother was present at her audition for Julliard. Her mother, a florist with an incredibly busy schedule and informs Sara that she will be unable to attend her audition. Sara is devastated and begs her mother to adjust her schedule and be there for her big moment. Her mother is unable to turn her down and commits to being there. As Sara begins her audition, she is saddened to not see her mother in the audience and goes on unsuccessfully to complete her audition. A trooper informs Sara after her audition that her mother has been killed in an accident. Sara drops to the floor in despair, and her life is uprooted. Sara now has to move to be with a father she barely knows who has been absent most of her life and resume in a high school in an impoverished urban area of town. Sara has lived a homogeneous existence up to this point in her life and hasn't experienced much diversity so her new school and address are an incredible culture shock for her. After a tough adjustment, Sara is finally befriended by Chenille (Kerry Washington) who takes her under her wing, introducing her to friends at school and taking her to the hot dance club where a majority of students spend their free time. Sara also meets Chenille's brother Derek, a smart young man who must overcome the negative influences of the friends he surrounds himself with so he can better his life and attend Georgetown University. Derek decides to teach Sara the kind of dancing she will need to blend in at the dance club, and the two quickly fall in love. Throughout their union, Derek discovers the passion and talent Sara has for ballet and works with her to encourage her to resume her passion and audition for Julliard again. Sara is reluctant, as she feels she cannot make such a big step without her mother, but the confidence Derek bestows upon her may be the final push she needs to succeed. In a time and place in which interracial relationships are not looked upon highly, Derek and Sara must decide if their love for one another is worth overcoming the many stumbling blocks their relationship faces. Julia Stiles plays the complicated emotionally charged part of Sara quite well. Sean Patrick Thomas just exudes charisma each moment he is on-screen and shares an infectious chemistry with Stiles. Kerry Washington drives the story quite well, proving that she was just as brilliant of an actress we know her to be now 15 years ago. The score and choreography are spellbinding and takes up most of the film, while simultaneously driving a beautiful story. Oftentimes, in a teen dancing movie, the plot is neglected for the dancing, but that problem does not occur in Save the Last Dance, thankfully. While it does not enjoy much critical acclaim, I found the film an enjoyable narrative dealing with tough issues as suppressed guilt and interracial relationships in a meaningful and powerful way.

This is my favourite movie. It's about a girl that dances ballet but one day she loses her mother. She stops dancing and moves to her father In New York. In her new school she meets a boy that she falls in love with, he is also a dancer and that helps her to start again. Her dream is to get in to Julliard dace school, but it's a long and hard way to get there. This movie is fantastic, it's a drama whit love, hate, hip hop and a lot of dancing. Save the last dance is a movie for everybody that's interested in dancing and hip hop. I give this movie a 10, top notch! I have seen it a thousand times and I will probably see it a thousand more.

I have seen this film in DVD shops for ages but figured it was just a chick flick so never bothered to buy it even when it went to under £3.00 Then it came on one of the movie channels so I decided to give it a try. Now I am going to buy it next time I see it. This is a very good film, well acted by everyone and with a story that covers some difficult subjects very well indeed. I thought that Julia Styles was perfect and looked very awkward when she first started dancing hip hop but became believable just as she would have done learning from scratch a new dance form. I thought her ballet was less convincing and it even looked like there was a double in there at times. But over all an excellent film and well worth a watch.

I think the title pretty much sums up what I'm going to say in this review. I finally got around to watching 'Save the Last Dance', becoming quite tired of the 'How can you not have seen 'Save the Last Dance', it's the best dance film out there!' comments each time the film came up in conversation. And yes, I enjoyed it, it was a good, entertaining film, but it definitely was not one of the greatest things ever created and I don't think it deserves quite as much hype as it receives.The story line has become a cliché by now, girl and boy become romantically involved against a backdrop of dancing. I think that this was one of the first dance films of it's kind though, and you can almost feel that throughout the movie - it feels fresh and original, not like a carbon copy of an already done and dusted formula (such as 'How She Move' felt). Also, I think it's important to mention how influential this film was in encouraging more dance films to be made, some of them rather good too, like Step Up 1 + 2, Take the Lead, etc. However, by now the formula wears thin, and has been done too many times, so even whilst this film was one of the first in it's genre, a viewer watching this for the first time these days already knows what will happen at the end less than 10 minutes into the film, and that's definitely a let down (though, it's hardly a fault that the movie could have prevented, without foresight).The dancing is not the greatest I have ever seen in this genre of film, that would have to go, hands down, to the street-dancing in Step Up 2 (and I do believe that the ballet in Step Up 1 probably deserves second place) but it is good enough for the film, and definitely not the worse I have seen. In fact, Sara's final dance may be one of my favourite routines ever seen on film. I was very surprised to discover Julia Stiles was such a capable, and very skilled ballet dancer - her dancing impressed me far more than her acting in this film (which, although wasn't necessarily bad, was more of her same old style - it's as if she plays the same person in each role, who just happens to be in a completely new situation each time). Kerry Washington also impressed me as the confident, mouthy, and good at heart Chenille and I believe Sean Patrick Thomas also deserves a mention as Derek, as does Fedro Starr as Malakai.Overall, I did like this film, it was fast paced, intelligent, easy watching, and a welcome change to the recent films I have been watching lately which all feel much slower, and emotionally heavy. However, the plot gives this film it's limitations, and although for it's genre it is up there with the best, it's not a film that I would say deserves to be forever remembered in film history. But that again, there are only a few that do.