Cheap Save the Last Dance (DVD) (Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas) (Thomas Carter (II)) Price

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Customer Reviews of Save the Last Dance

Stiles is Sarah Johnson, a suburban teen whose life is torn apart when her mother is killed in a car accident en route to her daughter's ballet recital. Sent to live with her estranged father Roy (Terry Kinney), a down-on-his-luck jazz musician, she is forced to adapt to her new environment -- inner city Chicago. There she enrolls in a school in which she is pretty much the only color. She makes friends with Chenille Reynolds (Kerry Washington), a single mother, and her brother Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), a smart kid who is at a crossroads in life. She also makes enemies with Nikki (Bianca Lawson), who wants Derek all to herself, and Malakai (Fredro Starr), Derek's best friend and convicted criminal, who's swiftly descending into a life of crime. Needless to say, a relationship develops between Sarah and Derek, and they help each other: he gets her involved in dance again, and she opens his mind to the possibilities of life outside the hood.

Save The Last Dance is more realistic than many of its counterparts. The high school looks like a real high school. The dance club is more like a dance club; ie, some people dance, some don't, and nobody breaks out into a quasi-Busby Berkeley style group dance number. And the actors make their characters seem like real people. Director Thomas Carter and screenwriters Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards bring up a number of issues that make the movie more than just another teen flick. If you're a romantic, the ending will leave you with a huge smile on your face, and perhaps even choke you up. It's definitely worth taking a look at.

Dynamic Dance Duo
Save the Last Dance (2001), starring Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas, is more than your average teen movie. This romantic drama deals with grief, guilt, interracial relationships, violence, and inner conflicts. While most romantic dramas are extremely predictable, Director Thomas Carter II does a wonderful job with plot twists.
The movie begins with Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) on a train headed for Chicago to live with her estranged father, Roy (Terry Kinney). Sara begins to have flash backs on the train, and soon we find out that Sara was an aspiring ballet dancer, and while auditioning for the Julliard School of Dance, her mother was killed in a tragic car accident on her way to the audition. Grief and guilt cause Sara to hang up her ballerina shoes.
Sara arrives in Chicago and is forced to live a completely different life style than she is accustomed to. She attends a predominantly African American high school on Chicago's rough South Side. In her first English class, she gets into a debate with Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), and immediately dislikes him because of his attitude. Sara feels out of place until she befriends Chenille (Kerry Washington), a single teenage mother. It turns out that Derek is Chenille's brother, which is totally unexpected by Sara and the viewing audience.
Sara quickly adjusts to living in an African American culture with the help of her new friends. Sara begins to take an interest in Derek when he asks her to dance at a popular hip hop club. As Derek begins to coach her on hip hop dancing, an interracial relationship begins, and so do the social problems.
Dancing is the key to this movie because that is how most of the relationships develop. Most of the conflicts take place during the dancing scenes as well.
Overall, I rated this film a four star rating. I was expecting another teen movie, and instead I got so much more out of it. If you are interested in a serious drama that touches on a plethora of topics this film is worth viewing.

One of the best movies
This is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was the first movie I ever saw with Julia Stiles in, and she is now one of my favorite actresses. The story is so real. It starts when Julia's character, Sarah's, mother dies, in a car accident. She goes to live with her estranged father, in an almost-all black community. There is this whole inter-racial theme going on, and really puts up with what it is for whites to date blacks. The whole story is amazing, and there are so many sub-plots; teenage pregnancy, drugs, parent problems, (i.e. splitting, and death,) moving, and relationship. Sarah wants to go to Julliard for ballet, but then after she moves she goes to a club where everything is hip-hop, and she's on the outside. An amazing movie with an excellant cast.