Posted: 12/25/2000

Save the Last Dance

(2000)

by Joe Steiff

From the land of Joe’s Apartment…

Over the past few years, MTV has been making an effort to be known not just as a video radio station or the vanguard of reality shows (Real World) but rather as the creator of original “dramatic” (well, at least, “fictional”) programming for television and feature films. But would the adolescent boys who have long held MTV’s audience demographic be interested in watching Stories rather than videos featuring scantily clad women? Or was MTV searching for a new identity?

After an ill-advised singing/dancing cockroach movie (Joe’s Apartment, about as far from scantily clad dancing women as you can get), it seems that MTV may have found their film niche and audience. No more hormone-addled adolescent males. No, now MTV’s going for the girls. And if Save The Last Dance is any indication, they might just be successful.

This is not to say that it’s a great film. Or even deserving of much more than a moderate “good” as an adjective. But Paramount is reporting that during the film’s opening weekend, 78 percent of the audience was female, 61 percent was under 21 and 35 percent was black. A reported 21 percent jump in business from Friday to Saturday would seem to indicate that the movie enjoyed good word of mouth, at least in the estimation of Wayne Lewellen, president of distribution at Paramount Pictures, as reported to Reuters.

Surely part of the appeal is strong female characters. And to “keep it real,” MTV makes sure they each have Dreams.

Sara (Julia Stiles, from Ten Things I Hate About You) keeps telling everyone she “used to dance,” but don’t let that fool you - she wants to be a ballerina. Nikki (Bianca Lawson, the original choice for Cordelia on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and then later cast as Kendra on the show) dreams of getting her ex-boyfriend, Derek, back. Chenille (newcomer Kerry Washington), Derek’s sister and a teenage mother, dreams of - hmmm, well, getting the father of her child to take some interest in her - uh, I mean, interest in their son.

Even Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) has dreams: he wants to be a doctor.

None of the girls in the film seem to take much shit from anyone, especially the guys. They stand up for themselves and call ‘em as they see ‘em, despite the fact that this assertiveness is undermined by the end of the film. Ultimately, Sara needs Derek not just waiting outside in the lobby but actually on the stage with her in order for her to go through with the audition. (At least the boyfriend in Flashdance had the good graces to wait outside and down the street, roses in hand.)

And as for the dreams, well, the film hints at one’s responsibility for making his/her dreams happen by the choices he/she makes. Derek’s chances of being a doctor will be put in severe jeopardy if he chooses to participate in a drive-by shooting. Sara “used to be a dancer” because she chose to stop dancing after her mother’s fatal car crash.

Neither of these choices is really explored. They are abbreviated; short handed much like Sara and Derek’s hanging out, which seems to come out of nowhere. There’s no development to their friendship; it just exists immediately. At least the romantic tension between them has some semblance of development, though it’s clear that the film is not really concerned with Sara or Derek’s relationship (just as their imminent separation is not discussed between the characters). The film is simply about her dream to dance and all the things that get in her way.

The abbreviation of film elements is evident even in the title (save the last dance for whom?) and the musical score which draws on a fragment of melody from the old pop standard “Smile (though your heart is breaking).” It may even explain why most of the day exteriors are dim cool tones that make you want to squint (despite the fact the interiors are all lush saturated warm tones). Is this poor filmmaking or simply the next logical extension of the much-discussed MTV-style editing: MTV-style storytelling?

The one area where the film might have been truly daring was in regards to race. Did I mention that Sara is White and everyone else is Black? This seems to basically be a non-issue for most of the film (unless you look for the subtext in my earlier paragraph on dreams).

Nikki’s one biting comment in the first half of the film seems to be motivated more by “who’s the new girl” kind of rivalry than any sort of racism. The race issue only comes into play once Sara has resolved to no longer let her mother’s death keep her from dancing. Thus racial tension is simply a new obstacle for Sara’s dream now that the old one is gone.

Race is merely a plot device.

For a moment, it seemed that MTV was providing a model world where race doesn’t matter. Fantasy? Yes. But most of this film is, so to truly embrace the fantasy would have been quite an achievement. Instead, Chenille, Derek’s sister and Sara’s best friend, sets Sara straight on dating the one good Black man in the city. And causes the breakup which will create the final obstacles to Sara’s commitment to audition.

Sara’s dancing supercedes everything. Even the story is about timing or at least being late. Sara’s mother dies because she’s late to see Sara’s audition; Derek is late to the audition, giving the audience plenty of opportunity to see that Sara can’t do it by herself. Even Sara’s father finally finishes her bedroom as she’s basically leaving for Julliard.

Really, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the movie. What’s not in the trailer, you can figure out pretty easily. And for a film from MTV, even the music is rather mundane.

The mean-spirited side of me wants to say that if you’re an adolescent girl who has a Dream (with a capital “D”) or if Flashdance, Jungle Fever or Fame were too deep for you, this is the movie for you.

But…

That makes it sound like I hated the movie; and I didn’t. It’s not bad. And you have to admire that the director managed to make a film like this that has no graphic violence or sex. Maybe that’s the film’s primary weakness: Save The Last Dance is inoffensive because it ignores all of the potentially messy issues it uses as a backdrop. It’s just sort of bland.

Next to dancing cockroaches, though, it’s a masterpiece.

Joe Steiff teaches at Columbia College Chicago when he’s not watching MTV.

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