Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

I genuinely thought that I had watched this movie before.

In fact, I have it on DVD and it’s not in the cellophane packaging.

Turns out I hadn’t.

Turns out I’d only watched the first ten minutes year and years ago before apparently getting bored.

I decided it was high time to rectify that.

After the death of her mother, Sara (Julia Stiles) gives up her love of ballet and moves to Chicago to live with a father she barely knows. Joining a new school, it’s near impossible for her to blend in as one of the few white people in attendance.

She soon makes a friend in Chenille (Kerry Washington) and her brother Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), however when her relationship with the latter begins to grow, and threatens to break the new life she’s started to build, Sara is left with a choice to make.

Even though I’ve never seen this movie, watching it felt like a throwback and a half. The music, the dancing the overall black teen culture. Granted I’m not American, and the characters probably had about ten years on me when the movie came out, but that feeling of memory lane eased the process of becoming wholly invested in this film.

Stamped as a “dance movie”, Save the Last Dance was so much more, and for such a genre, had a surprising amount of realistic substance. With themes such as assimilation, grief, interracial dating, self-fulfilling prophecy, each was handled effectively and given the right amount of attention and poignancy throughout.

Both the main characters and the secondary ones had depth, their own arch and unique personality – which I always appreciate.

Shout out to the ageless Bianca Lawson who makes an appearance, as well as a young Kerry Washington, who I had no clue was in this movie – she grown now, with accolades such as Django Unchained (2012) and Scandal (2012 – 2018) under her belt, but in the same vein as Julia Stiles, it’s great to see the forgotten places from whence these actors and actresses began.

All that’s left to say is that I’m glad to have finally watched Save the Last Dance, in fact, the more I talk about this movie the more I commend it as a solid movie, and not only of its time. Though the time has long since passed, I’m sad that I missed being part of the hype and culture that bred from this movie during its initial release.