# Save the Last Dance

Save the Last Dance is a 2001 American dance film produced by MTV Films, directed by Thomas Carter and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas as a teenage interracial couple in Chicago who work together to help Stiles's character train for a Juilliard School dance audition.
Released theatrically in the United States on January 12, 2001, the film received mixed reviews from critics. It was a box-office success and grossed $131.7 million worldwide against a $13 million budget.
A direct-to-video sequel, Save the Last Dance 2, was released in 2006.

## Plot

Seventeen-year-old Sara Johnson, a promising ballet dancer in suburban Chicago, hopes to be admitted to the Juilliard School and implores her mother to attend the audition. She fails the audition and soon learns that her mother was killed in a car accident on her way to get to it.
Sara is wracked with guilt and gives up ballet. She moves to the South Side to live with her estranged father Roy, a relatively unsuccessful jazz musician who plays the trumpet at nightclubs. Sara moves in with Roy, who lives in a dilapidated home. Sara transfers to a majority-black high school, where she is one of a handful of white students. Sara quickly befriends Chenille Reynolds, a teenage single mother who is having relationship problems with her ex-boyfriend Kenny.
Chenille invites Sara to a dance club called Stepps, where Sara has her first experience dancing to hip hop rhythms. At Stepps, Sara dances with Derek, Chenille's brother. Derek is studious and responsible, something rare in his community. He dreams of attending Georgetown University and eventually becoming a pediatrician. Derek likes Sara, and decides to help her develop her dancing abilities by incorporating more hip hop into her style.
Derek takes a reluctant Sara to the Joffrey Ballet and, afterward, she confides in him about her mother and her dreams. Later, they return to the club and amaze others with their dancing. While they are performing, Derek's ex-girlfriend Nikki interrupts them and begins dancing with Derek, making Sara retreat to the bar.
Afterward, Derek returns to Sara and apologizes for pairing up with Nikki. They subsequently make up and return to Roy's apartment. Having achieved his dream of being accepted into Georgetown, Derek convinces Sara to follow her dreams of Juilliard; they eventually begin a romantic relationship.
At school, Nikki picks a fight with Sara during gym. Chenille tells Sara that while she did not approve of the fight, she can sympathize with Nikki’s bitterness since Sara, a white girl, is seemingly "stealing" one of the few decent black boys at school. Because of this hurtful conversation, Sara and Chenille's friendship becomes strained, and Sara decides to break up with Derek as the backlash becomes too much for her to handle.
Meanwhile, Derek deals with his friend Malakai, who is deeply involved in the gang lifestyle that Derek is trying to leave. Derek agrees to help Malakai execute a drive-by at the same time that Sara has an audition. Roy has a heart-to-heart talk with Sara and encourages her to go through with the audition.
After learning what Chenille said to Sara, Derek angrily confronts her about it, and explains that he dumped Nikki because she cheated on him for someone else. Remorseful, Chenille admits that what she did was wrong and apologizes. She also tells Derek that Sara did not want to break up with him, but Chenille's words hurt her to the point of feeling forced to.
Chenille also admits that she has been resentful for how Kenny has been treating her, including not helping her raise their son and not being a good boyfriend to her. She unintentionally took it out on Sara since she has been envious of her and Derek's relationship. Chenille encourages Derek to reconcile with Sara, admitting that she knows that Sara is in love with him. She warns Derek not to follow Malakai, knowing that he may lose his chance to attend Georgetown and his future if he is arrested. Derek meets up with Malakai and does his best to dissuade him from carrying out the attack, but Malakai refuses.
Derek arrives at a crucial point in Sara's performance to offer her encouragement and moral support. Afterward, Sara is accepted into Juilliard and rekindles her relationship with Derek. Meanwhile, the drive-by is botched and Malakai is arrested. The film closes as Sara, Derek, Chenille, and their friends meet at Stepps to celebrate Sara's successful audition.

## Cast

* Julia Stiles as Sara
* Sean Patrick Thomas as Derek
* Terry Kinney as Roy
* Fredro Starr as Malakai
* Bianca Lawson as Nikki
* Kerry Washington as Chenille
* Vince Green as Snookie
* Garland Whitt as Kenny

## Production

Julia Stiles landed the role of Sara after director Thomas Carter saw her dance scene in the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You. Lacking dance experience, Stiles prepared for her role by two months of intensive training for the ballet scenes and also rehearsing the choreography for the hip hop scenes. Fatima Robinson was the film's hip hop choreographer.

## Release

The film debuted at number 1 at the North American box office, making $27.5 million in its opening weekend. Though the film had a 44% decline in earnings the following weekend, it still held the top spot for another week. It grossed $91,057,006 in the US alone and $131.7 million worldwide.

## Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 53% approval rating based on 100 reviews, with an average score of 5.5/10 and a consensus: "This teen romance flick feels like a predictable rehashing of other movies."
Positive reviews praised the performances of Stiles, Thomas, and Washington. Desson Howe of The Washington Post said that Stiles and Washington were appealing performers and concluded, "Thomas is the movie's best element. He puts so much authority in his performance, he makes this controversial romance seem like the best thing that could happen to anyone. That's no easy task."
In a three-star review, Roger Ebert said that despite the film's clichéd story and romance, "the development is intelligent, the characters are more complicated than we expect, and the ending doesn't tie everything up in a predictable way." Charles Taylor of Salon wrote, "for all its dumb clichés it offers the basic appeal of teen movies: the pleasure of watching kids be kids, acting as they do among themselves instead of how parents and teachers expect them to act."
Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Mark Caro said, "On paper the movie is full of cliches recently explored elsewhere...Yet in this case the outline is not the story; the people who inhabit it are," and in this way, "Save the Last Dance triumphantly passes the audition."
Negative reviews criticized the editing style of dance scenes, the film's "after-school special"-like subplot, and the script for not delving enough into the issues of interracial relationships. Critic Wesley Morris wrote "the movie combines the worst of urbansploitation with the worst of teensploitation, and outfits them both in makings of the ultimate racial-crossover melodrama -- teen motherhood, deadbeat teen dads, drive-bys, a dangerous ex-girlfriend, speeches straight from the pages of Terry McMillan." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "director Thomas Carter is afraid to pump up the volume on its own interracial, hip hop Romeo and Juliet story, lest it challenge even one sedated viewer or disturb the peace."

## Criticism

The dancing in Save the Last Dance was particularly criticized, derided as mediocre at best, and borderline offensive at worst. It was ranked with the poor dancing of similarly themed teen movies from the early 2000s such as Honey, You Got Served and Stomp the Yard. Its characterization of "hip hop dancing" as amounting to 'random fingerpointing and sitting awkwardly in a chair' has spawned viral memes on social media.
Additionally, the plot line suggesting that Sara's subpar audition was enough to earn admission to Juilliard has been mocked as "ludicrous". In a twenty-year retrospective of the movie, Karla Rodriguez of Complex Magazine wrote:
   We are sure Stiles worked really hard to learn the choreography for this scene and she deserves to be commended for her efforts—especially since the actress had no previous dance experience prior to the film and still did most of the dancing herself. But let's be honest: If it wasn't part of a movie, there's no way that dance number would have held up in real life and gotten her accepted into one of the most prestigious dance schools in the world. After all, the famous NYC school has an extremely low acceptance rate of 8%, beating out a majority of Ivy League schools. That figure makes the fine arts school harder to get into than Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.
During a Weekend Update segment on the December 9, 2023 episode of Saturday Night Live, comedian Chloe Fineman did Stiles's dance from the end of the film with Stiles, who made a surprise cameo on the show.

## Awards and nominations

| Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
| Black Reel Awards | Theatrical — Best Supporting Actress | Kerry Washington | Nominated |
| Golden Reel Awards | Best Sound Editing — Music, Musical Feature Film | Michael T. Ryan | Nominated |
| MTV Movie Awards | Best Kiss | Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas | Won |
| MTV Movie Awards | Best Dance Sequence | Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas | Nominated |
| MTV Movie Awards | Best Female Performance | Julia Stiles | Nominated |
| MTV Movie Awards | Breakthrough Male Performance | Sean Patrick Thomas | Won |
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Movie: Actress | Julia Stiles | Won |
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Movie: Breakout Star | Kerry Washington | Won |
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Movie: Fight Scene | Julia Stiles and Bianca Lawson | Won |
| Teen Choice Awards | Choice Movie: Drama | | Nominated |
| Young Hollywood Awards | Standout Performance — Male | Sean Patrick Thomas | Won |

### Home media

The film was released on DVD and VHS on June 19, 2001. It was re-released on DVD on January 24, 2017.

## Sequel

A sequel to the film, titled Save the Last Dance 2, was released direct-to-video on October 10, 2006.