Save the Last Dance

Flashdance meets Boyz N the Hood in this crowd-pleasing dance movie from director Thomas Carter. Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate about You) plays the aspiring ballerina who gives up her ambitions after her beloved mother dies in a car crash while speeding to an important audition. Consumed with guilt, Stiles goes to live with her estranged jazz musician father on Chicago's depressed South Side. There she finds herself part of the minority in a mainly black school, coping with racial slurs when she starts dating model student Sean Patrick Thomas. The course of true love doesn't run smoothly, but nights out at the local hip-hop club allow Stiles to broaden her horizons and regain her passion for dance. With its optimistic view of ghetto life, and a ridiculous drive-by shooting subplot that threatens to lure Thomas back to petty criminality, this is fantasy melodrama pure and simple, its fresh hip-hop milieu barely disguising its formula roots. But Stiles and Thomas are attractive leads, the dance sequences make all the right moves, the soundtrack hits the spot and the expected payoff is as uplifting as it is sentimental. This is a perfect example of the Hollywood dream machine at its inoffensive, effortless and engaging best.