Forced to live with her estranged, bohemian father (Terry Kinney) in a Chicago ghetto, she finds herself as one of the few white girls in a predominantly black high school. Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) has spent her entire life training for a career in dance, but, when her mother dies in a traffic accident on the day of her unsuccessful audition for Julliard, she gives it all up. The characters are not as deeply realized, the dialogue is not as crisp, and the plotting has a distinctly scripted feel to it. However, when it comes to the quality of the writing, Save the Last Dance falls considerably short of the mark set by Girlfight.
Although numerous issues are being employed as grist for director Thomas Carter's mill in Save the Last Dance, the film's core is centered upon a young woman's struggle to find the inner strength to move forward while living in a harsh, unforgiving, urban environment.
#JULIA STILES MOVIES DANCE MOVIE#
While Billy Elliot and Center Stage are appropriate touchstones for Save the Last Dance because all three films deal with ballet in one form or another, the circumstances of the lead character in this movie are actually closer to those of the protagonist in Karen Kusama's Girlfight. However, balancing out Save the Last Dance's weaknesses are energetic choreography and strong acting, and these two factors go a long way towards mitigating the problems associated with the film's less effective elements. In the interim, Center Stage and Billy Elliot have offered some of the same ideas. Also, the use of dance as a channel to redemption is not as fresh as it would have seemed a year ago. The film stumbles not so much in its strict adherence to the expected, but in its sometimes facile and unconvincing resolution of complex issues (interracial relationships, grief and its associated guilt, escaping the snare of gang wars and urban violence). Save the Last Dance, a movie about finding salvation on the dance stage, takes a little Pygmalion, a little Romeo and Juliet, and a lot of formula, wraps them up with a neat bow, and delivers a passably entertaining package.
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