A Great Film! Fantastic

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2001)

When I went to go see Save the Last Dance it's opening night, I was skeptic about the plot of this film. White girl goes to urban city where she is a minority in the school that is mostly black, she meets a guy whom teaches her the fundamentals of hip hop dancing and they fall heads over heel over each other while many on-lookers disapprove the interracial aspect of their relationship. This film could have easily fallen into the many cliche's found in high school aged drama's being made today - but it doesn't, it's smarter! To me the character's depicted here are much more developed then in other teen romances (ex: She's all that, Here on Earth) The story probes deeper into the lives of the individual characters. The film is sold as a romance flick, which it is, but it also presents the diffrent lives of each of the players - all of whom we come to care about. Julia Stiles shines in her role as Sarah, I first saw her in the teen flick "Ten Thing's I Hate About you" and eversince then she has become a rising star. Don't be suprise if in a couple of years when she finds the right script she'll be standing on the stage of Shrine Auditorium making her Oscar acceptance speech. Sean Patrick Thomas is dashing and charming as Dereck, by the end of the film we all wish that he was our boyfriend. On top of that the dancing was the icing on top of the cake for me. Sure there wasn't as many dance numbers as there was in "Center Stage" but we get to see Sarah and Dereck court each other while sharing there common love of dance - not to mention those scenes are very funny. The film sort of reminds me of that classic "Dirty Dancing" only I like Save the Last Dance WAY better then it. Some may disagree, but I figure I'm 16 this film is My generation, I know the songs, I know the dance - I can relate better. All in all see this film because it is not the usual teen romance flick, it is a clever story filled with a great actors. *If you need more proof STLD is the number 1 movie for this weekend! Bumping cast away to number 2! Word of mouth for this movie is great, it already made 24 mill exceeding it's cost of 13 mill!*