Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Save the Last Dance (2000)
Director: Thomas Carter
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
In Footloose, if memory serves, young Kevin Bacon was the cool city kid who got toes tapping and pulses racing in some small Midwestern burg by introducing the hicks to...Kenny Loggins. Flash forward 17 years and it's immediately apparent that time has stood still in Middle America. Model student Sara (Stiles) favours knitwear and braids, and dreams of being a ballerina. Then - and we're still stuck in a Readers' Digest opening credit sequence, I'm afraid - mom dies in her mad rush to get to her daughter's Julliard audition (which she flunks anyway) and a dejected Sara hangs up her ballet shoes. She moves into her estranged dad's fleapit Chicago apartment and adjusts to being the only white face in her new school. This race element is the most interesting aspect of the film. Urban hip has always condescended to provincial square but rarely has it been so overtly identified as black hip, white square. Sara comes under the protective tutelage of first Chenille (Washington), then Chenille's brother Derek (Thomas), who teaches her to dance for real. As teen melodrama, well, Carter's film is what it is; but for such a mainstream black-consciousness movie, at least it doesn't shy from addressing some touchy issues about masculinity, parenthood, and black attitudes to whites.Author: TCh
Cast & crew
Director: Thomas Carter
Producer: Robert W Cort, David Madden
Cast: Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas, Kerry Washington, Fredro Starr, Terry Kinney, Bianca Lawson, Vince Green, Garland Whitt full cast
Duration: 113 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now