The 2000s gave us Save the Last Dance. When the movie came out, it was a popular teen
dance film, but how has it held up? While there's still plenty to love in Save the Last
Dance, adults watching it might notice some details that younger audiences don't.
Save the Last Dance has a happy ending, but it's hard to believe that it's a hopeful story
about love and following your dreams from the opening of the film. The first few minutes
are pretty depressing, especially for a teen movie. In the opening scenes, we see Sara
taking the train to live with her dad in Chicago. Not only did she fail to get into the school
of her dreams, but her mother has also died in a tragic car accident.
That's a lot to unpack at the start of a movie, especially when the film isn't supposed to
be a tearjerker. While it's meant to be uplifting and empowering, it's hard to shake off the
sadness and the desperation of that opening. It's a bleak start to the film, particularly
one that was released in the 2000s, which was a decade of delightfully cheesy teen movies.
Sara is a great dancer but is she really Juilliard material? It's one of the top schools for
the arts. Students who are accepted to the institution are at the top of their game.
The school's famous alumni include Viola Davis, Nina Simone, Robin Williams, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Its dance program is incredibly competitive, accepting only 24 students each year. With
applications coming in from all over the world, that means this particular character's chances
of acceptance are pretty minuscule.
Sara insists that her mom be at her audition, even though she's having a busy day at work.
"Mom. This is the hardest, most important day of my life, you have to be there. You
promised."
Auditions can be nerve-racking, sure, but how is Sara supposed to survive in a cutthroat
environment if she can't handle one without her mom being there? How will she manage performances
if someone isn't there to hold her hand? If she needs that level of emotional support
in order to get on stage, a performance career might not be the best fit for her and may
only lead to future anxiety.
After Sara's mother dies, she's forced to live with her estranged father in a home that
looks like it's falling apart. Sara's dad doesn't even get her a proper bed and instead
has her sleep on a sofa bed from the '80s. He doesn't keep nutritious food in the house
for her, instead showing her only a freezer full of TV dinners. Sara immediately dismisses
the idea of eating those meals, saying that her mom wouldn't let her eat that kind of
food.
"I had a big lunch."
While TV dinners aren't the worst thing you can eat, Sara's mom had the right idea. Fresh
foods have a lot more nutritional value than frozen foods. The fact that her dad thinks
she can live off of frozen food is pretty ridiculous and a clear sign that he needs
to brush up on his parenting skills.
Sara goes through some pretty traumatic experiences. She loses her dream of attending Juilliard.
She experiences a massive upheaval in her life by having to move to a new city and attend
a new school. She also feels like her mother's death is her fault. Just one of those would
be enough to significantly stress out a person. So why isn't Sara in therapy?
At the very least, she should be in grief counseling to cope with her mom's death. It's
clear that she harbors a lot of guilt over her mother's passing, and, being separated
from her friends, she isn't getting much emotional support. Sara is clearly depressed, she isolates
herself and punishes herself by quitting dance, something that she loves to do. Both are signs
that she's not handling things well and needs some help.
Sara doesn't seem to be phased by the demographic shift she experiences when she starts at her
new school in Chicago. Strangely, though, while there isn't much hostility between the
white kids and the black kids in the school, they don't really mingle much either. Instead,
it seems that white kids more or less stick to themselves.
Seeing this kind of racial segregation in a movie that takes place in the 2000s is unnerving,
though it might not actually be too far off the mark. While Chicago is one of the most
racially diverse cities in the United States, it's also one of the most segregated. Different
groups largely stick to their own neighborhoods across the city and, it seems, to their own
lunch tables.
When Sara gets a fake ID so she can dance with her new friends at the nightclub STEPPS,
she's horrified to find out that the picture on her ID is someone who doesn't conform to
her aesthetic standards. Sara protests that the young woman is fat and ugly, which is
a pretty gross judgement call.
"Chenille. She's ugly."
The language is especially harsh coming from the film's main character, who we're supposed
to be rooting for. Had it come from the mouth of one of her friends, it would have maybe
been more understandable, but it's clear that Sara doesn't think that body shaming is a
big deal and that putting someone down is totally acceptable behavior. Thankfully, the
body positivity movement has been on the rise since Save the Last Dance came out in 2001.
Before Sara's first trip to STEPPS, she meets Chenille at her house. Sara asks if she's
dressed okay, and Chenille assures her she looks fine before they head out to the club.
Outside the club, Sara asks again if she's dressed appropriately for a night out. At
this point, Chenille borrows someone's car keys and gives Sara a backseat makeover. It
seems like this would have been a lot easier to do back at the house, but okay, Chenille,
do it your way. Chenille changes up Sara's hair, has her remove her shirt and wear just
a tank top and, here's the gross part, takes out her hoop earrings and has Sara put them
in her own ears.
This is a really good way to get an ear infection. It would have been one thing if Sara had borrowed
earrings back at the house where she could have disinfected them with alcohol first,
but sharing unsanitized earrings is not something anyone should ever do. Fans of Save the Last
Dance, take note.
Sara assumes that the baby Chenille's grandmother carries is Chenille's. While the baby is,
in fact, Chenille's son, it kind of makes you wonder if Sara would have jumped to the
same conclusion if Chenille were white.
"Is he yours?"
"He sure ain't Momma Dean's."
Just a few scenes later, she asks Derek if he has any kids, which seems to support the
theory that Sara thinks black people are more likely to be single teen parents. Her friend
from her hometown also assumes that her new neighborhood is in the "ghetto" and that there
are regular shootings. And then there's this:
"I met this guy, and he's really cool."
"They got white guys at your school?"
It never occurs to Sara's friend that she could date outside her race.
Even Chenille says that her brother, Derek, is "one of the few decent men we have left
after jail, drugs, and drive-by," thereby dismissing the vast majority of men in the
black community. On top of all that, the black characters in the film are all portrayed as
skilled dancers who are into hip hop. Save the Last Dance's stereotypes are so overdone
that when the film was released, it was panned by critics for its outdated clichés.
Sara is the primary white character, and in Save the Last Dance, that means she comes
with her own bundle of clichés. She's portrayed as a straight-laced girl who is supposed to
be a clear contrast to Chenille. While Chenille's primary purpose is to serve as a cautionary
tale about the difficulties of teen pregnancy, Sara's ambitions are set on her studies and
getting into a good college.
And things get weird the first time Sara goes to STEPPS. As she hits the dance floor, she
clearly has trouble dancing to hip hop. Even with years of dance training under her belt,
she's completely unable to feel the beat. Bizarrely, she seems to struggle with even
basic dance moves that are effortless for other characters in the film.
While people who are rejected from Juilliard can re-audition up to two times, it's pretty
unlikely that Sara would have gotten a second chance so late in the year...or that she would
have gotten a verbal confirmation of acceptance on the spot.
"I can't say this on the record yet, but welcome to Juilliard."
Needless to say that with only 24 open spaces available in the program, things get pretty
competitive. Auditions are scheduled well in advance, so the odds of Sara being granted
a second one so late in the audition season are pretty slim.
That doesn't even touch on how she managed to get back in top dancing shape and to perfect
her technique enough to be admitted in just one month. In order to even apply to Juilliard,
prospective students must be training for at least 10 hours per week, something Sara
clearly hadn't been doing until a few weeks before her second audition. Her dramatic second
try makes for an empowering cinematic moment, but it's one that would likely have been difficult
to pull off in real life.
It's no doubt a very dramatic moment during Sara's audition when Derek rushes into the
auditorium to motivate her after she makes a mistake in her dance routine, but it's also
pretty unprofessional. All it shows the audition committee is that Sara, who is already on
her second audition, needs a pep talk to perform.
"You can do it. It's how you were born to do it."
To make things even worse, Derek jumps back onto the stage to hug her after she successfully
completes her dance, telling the committee that they should let her in.
It's far more likely that, in a real audition, this kind of behavior would get a dancer rejected
from a school rather than accepted on the spot. It seems pretty unlikely that a school
with such a competitive program would grant admission to a student who's not only messed
up multiple auditions, but who also brings a dramatic boyfriend along with her. But hey,
this is a movie, so instead of the committee warning Sara about her unprofessional audition,
she instead is admitted to Juilliard as soon as she finishes dancing.
By the end of Save the Last Dance, Sara and Derek are back together and happy, but how
long can this relationship really last? It's clear that most of their friends and family
don't really approve, which is the first strike against them. They're also from completely
different backgrounds, and Sara is clearly more sheltered and doesn't fully comprehend
the troubles that people of color face in America.
"There's only one world, Chenille."
"That is what they teach you. We know different."
To top it off, they're both super young and are about to head off to different colleges.
Georgetown and Juilliard are a few hours apart, so, while Sara and Derek are both going to
be on the East coast, making this relationship work is still going to be a challenge. It
doesn't help that they've already proven that they have communication issues and have even
broken up once. Sorry, Sara and Derek, but this relationship seems doomed.
Throughout the film, we get pretty attached to two of the supporting characters, Malakai
and Chenille. Since this is a romantic dance film, we kind of expect everyone to get a
happy ending, but they don't. Malakai ends up injured and arrested, and he will presumably
be sent back to juvie instead of completing high school. Given his persistent unwillingness
to turn his life around, it's likely that he will never graduate.
Chenille's future looks like it will be tough, too, as she's a single teen mom. A big part
of her support system, her brother, is about to disappear, with Derek moving away for college.
It would have been nice if we could see her storyline end on a more optimistic note. Couldn't
the movie show that she, too, has plans for college, was awarded a scholarship, or started
a business?
Unfortunately, it seems that only Sara and Derek get happy endings as they merrily dance
off into the credits.
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