"Dirty Dancing." "Saturday Night Fever." "Footloose." Each of these movies treats the art of dance as a coming of age metaphor or an impetus for social revolution. Add MTV and Paramount Pictures' latest effort, "Save the Last Dance," to the list. The story of a young ballerina's journey through grief, fear and love treads the same path as its predecessors with mixed success.
Sara (Julia Stiles) is a small-town ballerina aspiring to gain acceptance to Juilliard, but when her mother is killed en route to her audition everything changes in an instant. Sara quits ballet and moves in with her estranged father (Terry Kinney) in a rough part of Chicago. Finding herself the only white girl with any sass at her new high school, Sara must find a niche for herself that is not defined by color in her almost completely African-American community.
Luckily for Sara, she meets the two coolest cats in town almost instantly. Chenille (Kerry Washington) and Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) are two good kids who have had a few hard knocks in life. Chenille struggles with the deadbeat father of her baby, while her brother Derek must reconcile the deadly gunslinging and drug dealing of his friends with his own sense of self-preservation. Chenille and Derek introduce Sara to hip-hop dancing at a local club, a far cry from the prescribed ballet Sara has always known, forcing her to face the reality of her new life and deal with her inner demons.
What "Save the Last Dance" would like to achieve is a classic fish-out-of-water story with a modern moral of tolerance. Sara and Derek's interracial relationship alienates them from their families and their friends and stretches their love to the breaking point. While the leads give solid performances - Stiles is especially convincing - the formulaic writing and glaring disregard for the reality of life in the ghetto keep "Last Dance" from being anything more than a fairy tale.
According to the way people talk in "Last Dance," life in the ghetto is tough, but other sources reveal too much Hollywood and not enough Southside Chicago. Thomas, as Derek, is handsome in his designer sweaters and blinding smile. Chenille and Derek's apartment is spacious and plushly accessorized. Such inconsistencies with the reality of poverty might be overlooked if the lives of the characters seemed somewhat difficult, but fortune comes too easily and obstacles are overcome too quickly to make a truly compelling movie.
Writers Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards never allow Sara time to grieve for her mother, nor the audience much time to doubt the inevitable cheery ending. The film's strongest asset is Stiles, who does best in dialogue-free scenes. Other actors are less lucky. Terry Kinney, as Sara's father, is stuck with painfully obvious lines like "I didn't want to mess up your life, or your mother's." Derek is never given a chance to be anything but a saint, rendering him an uninteresting character.
As "Last Dance" marches doggedly on to its climax, where Sara auditions for Juilliard, this time with Derek at her side, it reveals its good intentions. What Sara and Derek lack in chemistry (they would wilt next to the likes of Baby and Johnny in "Dirty Dancing"), they make up in goodheartedness. But like the setting of the film and characters' trendy clothes, none of it is quite real. "Last Dance" will satisfy the boy band crowd - the movie is as crisp and superficial as a three-minute pop song. The hip-hop centered soundtrack that sets the perpetual backbeat for the film will no doubt draw middle-school kids who will love the movie. That may be MTV Productions' real goal. Making a fine, memorable movie, apparently, was not.
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