Save the Last Dance

Seventeen-year-old Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles), a promising ballet dancer in suburban Chicago, hopes to be admitted to Juilliard School and invites her mother to attend the audition. She fails the audition and soon learns that her mother was killed in a car accident in her haste 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 (Terry Kinney), a jazz musician who plays the trumpet at nightclubs. She also transfers to a majority-black school, where she is one of a handful of white students, but quickly befriends Chenille Reynolds (Kerry Washington), a teenage single mother who is having relationship problems with an ex-boyfriend named Kenny (Garland Whitt). Chenille invites Sara to a dance club called STEPPS, where she has her first experience of dancing to hip hop rhythms. At STEPPS, Sara dances with Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), Chenille's brother and a student with dreams of attending Georgetown University to become a pediatrician. He decides to help Sara develop her dancing skills by incorporating more hip hop into her style. He takes a reluctant Sara to the Joffrey Ballet and, afterwards, she confides in him about her mother and her dreams. Later, they return to the club and amaze others with their dancing. While performing, Derek's ex-girlfriend Nikki (Bianca Lawson) interrupts the two 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. Later, Chenille tells Sara that she did not approve of the fight, but can understand the bitterness since Sara, a white girl, is "stealing" one of the decent black boys at school. Because of this conversation, Sara and Chenille's friendship becomes strained, and Sara decides to break up with Derek. Meanwhile, Derek deals with his friend Malakai (Fredro Starr), who is heavily into the gang lifestyle that Derek is trying to leave. Derek agrees to help Malakai execute a drive-by at the same time as Sara's 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 confronts her for it, as well as explaining his true reasons for dumping Nikki. Remorseful for her actions, Chenille admits that what she did was wrong and apologizes. She also tells Derek that Sara did not want to dump 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 sneaking around with Nikki instead. She unintentionally took it out on Sara since she has been jealous of her and Derek's relationship. Chenille encourages him to be with Sara, admitting that she knows that Sara has started falling in love with him. She also warns Derek not to follow Malakai, knowing that he may lose his chance to attend Georgetown and his future if he is arrested. Derek decides to bail on Malakai to attend Sara's audition, arriving at a crucial point in her performance to offer her encouragement and moral support. Afterward, Sara is accepted into Julliard and she rekindles her relationship with Derek. Meanwhile, the drive-by becomes botched and Malakai is arrested. The film closes as Sara, Derek, Chenille, and their friends meet at STEPPS to celebrate Sara's successful audition.

• Julia Stiles as Sara Johnson
• Sean Patrick Thomas as Derek Reynolds
• Kerry Washington as Chenille Reynolds
• Fredro Starr as Malakai
• Terry Kinney as Roy Johnson
• Bianca Lawson as Nikki
• Elizabeth Oas as Diggy
• Vince Green as Snookie
• Garland Whitt as Kenny

The film was released on DVD and VHS on June 19, 2001.[2]

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 was still enough to keep the film at the top spot for another week. It grossed $91,057,006 in the US alone and $131.7 million worldwide.[3]

Save the Last Dance won several awards, most notably:

• The 2001 MTV Movie Awards, winning in the category "Best Kiss" for Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas, who also won "Breakthrough Male Performance"; and being nominated for "Best Female Performance" for Julia Stiles and "Best Dance Sequence" for a scene in the hip hop club
• The 2001 Teen Choice Awards, winning in the categories "Choice Movie: Actress" for Julia Stiles, "Choice Movie: Breakout Star" for Kerry Washington and "Choice Movie: Fight Scene" for Julia Stiles and Bianca Lawson; and being nominated for "Choice Movie: Drama"
• The 2001 Young Hollywood Awards, winning in the category "Standout Performance — Male" for Sean Patrick Thomas
• It was also nominated for the 2002 Black Reel Awards in the category "Theatrical — Best Supporting Actress" for Kerry Washington and the 2002 Golden Reel Awards in the category "Best Sound Editing — Music, Musical Feature Film" for the music editor Michael T. Ryan.

As of January 2021, the film holds a 53% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 99 reviews with an average rating of 5.47/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "This teen romance flick feels like a predictable rehashing of other movies."[4] Some of the positive reviews are measured in their enthusiasm, with remarks such as, "Look elsewhere for reality or good drama. Look here, however, if you're in the mood for a good heaping of fantasy and some fun"; "a decent, well-put-together romantic drama to hold hands to on the weekend"; and "A sometimes predictable, but mostly enjoyable tale." Salon's reviewer called the film "a bad, friendly, enjoyable movie," observing that "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."[5]

Roger Ebert rated it three stars out of four:

The setup promises cliches, but the development is intelligent, the characters are more complicated than we expect, and the ending doesn't tie everything up in a predictable way.[6]

The film’s soundtrack was released on December 19, 2000 through Hollywood Records and consisted of hip hop and R&B music. The soundtrack was a huge success, and made it to several Billboard charts. It peaked at 3 on the Billboard 200, 2 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, 6 on the Top Soundtracks, 3 on the Top Internet Albums and 2 on the Canadian Albums Chart, and featured two charting singles "Crazy" and "You". Save the Last Dance went both gold and platinum on January 29, 2001 and was certified 2x multi-platinum on May 20, 2002. The Soundtrack won the American Music Award for best Soundtrack in 2002.[7]

Allmusic rated the soundtrack three out of five stars.[8] RapReviews rated it three and a half out of ten.[9]

1. "Shining Through" (Theme from Save the Last Dance) - Fredro Starr & Jill Scott
2. "You" - Lucy Pearl feat. Snoop Dogg & Q-Tip
3. "Bonafide" - X-2-C
4. "Crazy" - K-Ci & JoJo
5. "You Make Me Sick" - Pink
6. "U Know What's Up" - Donell Jones
7. "Move It Slow" - Kevon Edmonds
8. "Murder She Wrote" - Chaka Demus & Pliers
9. "You Can Do It" - Ice Cube feat. Mack 10 & Ms. Toi
10. "My Window" - Soulbone
11. "Only You" - 112 feat. The Notorious B.I.G.
12. "Get It On Tonite" - Montell Jordan
13. "All or Nothing" - Athena Cage
14. "Shining Through" (Theme from Save the Last Dance) [Soulshock & Karlin Bonus Track] - Fredro Starr & Jill Scott
15. "What You Want" - Mase

• Dirty Dancing, a 1987 film which starred Patrick Swayze, a performer from the Joffrey Ballet
• Dance Flick, a 2009 spoof film which starred Damon Wayans, Jr., and Shoshana Bush

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Save the Last Dance

• Save the Last Dance at IMDb
• Save the Last Dance at the TCM Movie Database
• Save the Last Dance at AllMovie
• Save the Last Dance at Rotten Tomatoes
• Save the Last Dance at Box Office Mojo