|
| Save the Last Dance |
|
  (4/10)
|
Runtime: 112 |
| Public Rating: 7.89 (166 votes) |
Director: Thomas Carter |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Romance/Drama |
Year: 2001 |
| Writer(s): Duane Adler |
| Reviewed by: Arturo García Lasca |
| |
Sometimes I wonder if I have what it takes to become a script-writer, I've always admired those well-written movies that are masterpieces for different reasons such as cool dialogues, an amazing story or some kick-ass twists. I don't want to make Mr. Duane Adler feel bad, but unless he can improve this writing debut he made in this film, he shouldn't be writing scripts, because honestly, I can write something better than this. More details ahead.
Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) is a high school student who tragically loses her mother and moves to Chicago to live with her father, who apparently she hasn't seen in a while. Her dad's house is pretty bad, but at least she wont be living in the streets. 97% of the students in the school she's going are black, and there aren't that many white people in the neighborhood either, so Sara starts making friends with whoever seems nicer.
She meets Chenille (Kerry Washington), who seems like a nice girl with a strong personality; from the beggining she also seems to like Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), Chenille's brother. Sara and Derek start a relationship, but that's bothering everyone for different reasons: On one hand we have Derek's friends, who don't want him to be with a white chick; on the other hand we have the black chicks, who are angry because of the fact that a white girl comes into 'their world' and take one of the smartest black guys around. But that's not all, there's a third group of people who aren't happy with this, it's the few racist people who walk on the street, or are in a train, some just don't like to see a black guy and a blonde girl together. Derek and Sara start dancing together, and Derek tells her to try to fulfill her dream of joining a good ballet school, but she has to work hard for that since she has failed before and she quit dancing. There are a couple of other sub-plots such as Derek's friends getting into some troubles and feeling that he's spending too much time with Sara, Sara's relationship with his father (played by Terry Kinney), etc.
This is by far one of the worst films I have seen this year. My mother wanted to rent it so badly -for some unknown reason-, and even though I had a feeling that it was going to suck, I had to let her rent it (or she wouldn't let me rent others, heh); being a film fan I'm forced to watch all sorts of movies, good or bad, so I just had to take a look at this one.
I didn't leave the room after the first fifteen minutes because I was having fun doing something I had never done before: Trying to guess what's going to happen next. Most of the times I was correct, I predicted over half the scenes in this movie, that's how predictable it is. Everything on this movie has been done before, now I couldn't complain about that if there was also something original or entertaining, but every single thing in this film was done before, and that's one of the things that made this film so boring. I know it'd probably be hard to come up with new stuff nowdays, with the thousands of films that have been done up to date, but not having the least bit of originality is just unforgivable. I'm not a big fan of dancing movies either, so I guess that didn't help at all. Some people just liked it -or say they did- because the inter-racial relationship and all that stuff; now I don't think that matters at all, not the color of the actor's skin nor the actors themselves could have saved this film, it's just an unoriginal, predictable mess.
I'd only recommend this film if you like hip-hop music or you're a fan of either Stiles or Thomas. Both of them were OK, no big deal but OK, I think we're going to see them both doing more movies in the future, but I hope the choices on their roles aren't as bad as this one. If you have no way of spending nearly 2 hours, then go out to the street and start feeding pigeons or playing the good old "ring the doorbell and run away" game, but don't watch this movie even if your life depended on it.
|
 Printable Version
|
(640*480) Wallpaper
(800*600) Wallpaper
(1024*768) Wallpaper
|
Do you agree/disagree with this review of Save the Last Dance? Let your opinions be heard in our forum.
|
Buy the Poster of Save the Last Dance (Click Here)
|
|
|
|
