Very nice study of modern inner-city race relations.

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2001)

SPOILERS - "Save The Last Dance" is about race relations. Older movies often explored this in the form of a black male (To Sir With Love, etc) into a predominantly white setting. This film does the opposite, transporting a very white and blonde female high school senior from the East into an almost all-black Chicago inner-city school. Although Sara (Julia Stiles) is not at all intimidated by the new setting, she is definitely a fish out of water, needing to learn a new language of slang, a new way of dressing, a new way of hip-hop dancing, and learning to deal with jealousy as she befriends Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), the good-looking and college-bound black senior. As Sara finds out, in the black culture such upstanding young men are highly prized and young black women resent their being lured away for the pool by young white women.
The director of "Save The Last Dance" is a black man, Thomas Carter, who over the years has directed a few other movies, but a larger number of high-profile TV series. Among his goals for this film was to make it as true to current life as possible, and in viewing it I believe he has achieved this. A distraction was the obvious age discrepancies of some of the actors. For example, high school senior "Derek" was played by a 30-year-old actor, and several of the other high-schoolers appeared between 25 and 30.

As the story starts, Sara is living with her mother, studying ballet, and auditioning for Juliard. She earlier pleaded with busy mom to be there for support. Mom was not there, Sara botches her modern dance routine, later finds out that mom died in a car wreck while trying to make it to the try-out. Distraught, Sara blames herself and her dance interest, and vows to give up ballet. Moving to Chicago to live with her estranged dad, a local jazz trumpeter, attends the local public school. Among the friends she makes is Derek, who teaches her to dance hip-hop, encourages her to take up ballet again, and the two develop a teen love relationship.
In the end, Sara gets another chance with a Juliard audition in Chicago, and finds she will be accepted. Derek yearns to be a doctor, a pediatrician, also finds he is accepted at Georgetown. Derek's friend, Malakai, shrugs off good advice, gets in trouble again, is carted off by the cops. Derek's high school sister has a young child, about 2 yrs, and battles with the father over his obligations. Thus this film touches on a number of real issues in modern teen life.
The DVD has a number of very interesting extra features, including comments by the director and several of the actors, plus a few deleted scenes which fill in a couple of "holes" in the script. Overall a very worthwhile film that faces the difficult issues of black/white race relations head on, but in a positive way.