Grade: B-

Verdict: Teen movie that's a cut above the rest.

Details: Starring Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas. Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content, profanity and brief drug references. At metro theaters. 1 hour, 53 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: “Footloose.” “Flashdance.” “Fame.” Yadda, yadda.

You take your young girl or guy, dress 'em up to look cool, call in a professional editor to cut the film so it looks like they know how to move feet and you've got the makings of a dance movie.

We've seen it over and over.

Well, here it comes. Again.

Somebody scream, because at least “Save the Last Dance” tries to do a bit more with the genre than just kick up its Sunday shoes.

It may be the latest teen flick, but “Last Dance” has a story and life issues and relationships with bite. And, hey, what's this? A parent apologizing to a kid for messing up her life?

These days there are literally dozens of movies, most of them starring some cluck named Freddie Prinze Jr., tossed at young teen girls. They're about girls and guys and proms and dances and killer sisters or ugly ducklings and sloppy kisses and tons of sex talk. “Save the Last Dance” may be the first one ever that teen girls might actually ought to see.

It's the story of Sara (couldn't you guess it's Julia Stiles of “10 Things I Hate About You”?), a high school student and ballet dancer auditioning for Juilliard. She's bellyached to her mom not to miss the tryout and, of course, good old dependable overworked mom is driving her heart out to make it there in time when, omigod, this truck. . . . 

OK. Convince me you'd make a movie for young teen girls and not pump up the melodrama.

Anyway, now Sara's stuck going to live with her dad, who not only is divorced from her dearly departed mom but is so irresponsible he's a jazz musician. And you know what that means.

Lily-white Sara has to switch to a predominantly black urban high school, and that's where the beat of this movie changes to hip-hop.

Sara meets Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), a smart, assured black teen. She hates him. So it's only a matter of time till they're in love (the movie intimates that they sleep together — once).

It isn't easy. Love never is. Derek's got a former flame — Nikki (Bianca Lawson) — who's determined to out-booty Sara on the dance floor, and a sister, Chenille (Kerry Washington), who's not above explaining reverse race issues.

It's the combo of the two — the film's zealous take on hip-hop dancing and the script's propensity to probe deep into relationships between kids and adults, girls and guys and, especially, girls and girls — that makes “Last Dance” tick. Plus, Stiles and Thomas deliver good, even believable, performances.

All the kids dance. They fight. They dance some more (the soundtrack boasts artists K-Ci and JoJo, Lucy Pearl, Donnell Jones, Kevon Edmonds, Pink, Kut Klose's Athena Cage and Onyx's Fredro Starr).

Sure it all winds up back at Juilliard tryouts again. And sure, you already know how it ends.

But at least getting there feels almost like a real movie.

— Bob Longino, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution