Hey folks, Harry here, I came within 200 meters of having to suffer through this, but instead I suffered through DOUBLE TAKE instead. Now it is interesting that Capone mentions some semi-racially insensitive material in SAVE THE LAST DANCE, but in DOUBLE TAKE... hell we have a black man telling a vulture, "Don't you know black people like Fried Chicken," then going into an abbreviated chicken walk, before being scared and running away from the vulture. MMMMMM HMMMMMMM, yup.... Ah, BAMBOOZLED is looking more and more dead on every day we live.... Here's Capone.....
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. And the shit keeps coming! Running a close second to ANTITRUST in the race for worst of 2001 is SAVE THE LAST DANCE, which is saved from title by the conviction of two lead actors (Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas), who work very hard to sell this otherwise tired and formulaic film.
In a series of very quick flashbacks, we learn that Sara (Stiles) is a talented dancer whose mother died in a car accident rushing to get to her audition to get into Julliard (sp?). Sara gives up dancing and moves to the Southside of Chicago to live with her largely absent musician father (Oz's Terry Kinney), and to finish her last year of high school in an almost entirely black school. She doesn't have nearly the difficulty fitting in at school, and some of the more popular kids even kind of adopt her and take her to their favorite club on the weekends. Sara forms an attachment to Derek (Thomas), who is destined for medical school (shades of GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?) although no one in the film is seen with so much as a text book that I can remember.
The two start dating, much to the discomfort of many of the black students at their school. Derek convinces her not to blame herself for her mother‚s death and to continue dancing. And in some very strange and non-P.C. scenes, he teaches her to 'fit in' at the school by acting, talking, walking, sitting, and dancing Black. I hope Jesse Jackson responds to this film the way he did to the Florida election results.
Despite the underwritten material they have to work with, Stiles and Thomas (from DRACULA 2000 and CRUEL INTENTIONS) are pretty good together. She‚s made a career of acting in reworked Shakespeare stories, including last year‚s HAMLET, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (based on "Taming of the Shrew"), and the upcoming "O" (based on OTHELLO. And she was also pretty good, albeit in a small role, in STATE AND MAIN. Clearly, SAVE THE LAST DANCE is a veiled ROMEO AND JULIET rehash with none of the beautiful language (and they don‚t die at the end). But there isn‚t a single aspect of the story here that you can‚t predict. Every fight, every decision, every emotional moment can be anticipated like a leap year.
Even the dance scenes, whether in the club or in Stiles‚ various try out scenes, aren‚t that good, and it seemed clear to me that double were used for the tougher moves. SAVE THE LAST DANCE made me appreciate last year‚s CENTER STAGE a lot more than I originally did. Having the actual actors do their own dancing makes a difference. I will give casting points to Fredro Starr as Derek‚s best friend, Malakai, fresh out of juvenile prison. He is genuinely scary in this film but the whole sub plot involving his character is completely out of place in this story and they spend way too much time trying to make us guess whether Derek will go the gangsta route with Malakai or stick with his girlfriend. Gee, I wonder.
Perhaps the greatest sin committed by SAVE THE LAST DANCE is that it dared to take a fluffy story like this and stretch it out to 2 hours. Boy was I bored.
Capone
Send Me Mail and your filthy lucre!!!! Now!
