Hey, look! It's guilty pleasure time!

Rating: 9/10 (19 November 2019)

It's been quite some time since I've seen this, and as other recent reviewers have pointed out, it holds up very well... for an MTV film, anyway.
She didn't win an Oscar, but Julia Stiles gave a great performance and it's hard to believe she was 19/20ish at the time of filming. The improv scene between Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas was superb, and hats off to Thomas Carter for keeping this in, as it's probably the most solid bit of character development in the whole film. I didn't realise this was improve until reading the trivia on IMDB.
Which brings me onto my next point- watching it again after all these years, the audience didn't get much of an opportunity to learn more about the main characters, other than Sara, Derek and to a lesser extent, Chenille. That being said, given this was an early noughties film, the racial themes in Save the Last Dance are quite strong and now I'm older and can appreciate its meaning more, it makes this film all the more special and comes together very well by the end.
Doesn't matter if you are black or white, you can't help who you fall in love with!
Just a shame that the (unnecessary) sequel was a disaster.