![]() Save the Last Dance (113 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for some violence, dirty dancing and swear words. You can be sure Adler knows from development hell, and we feel his pain. ![]() The latter's screenplay originally dealt with the experiences of the only white player on a high school basketball squad. Three-time Emmy winner Thomas Carter ("Swing Kids") directs from a rambling script by Cheryl Edwards and Marylander Duane Adler. But they remain a convincing, appealing twosome. When Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles) moves in with her estranged father after her mothers accidental death, she has to learn some new moves to fit in with her. He and the far-from-lithe Stiles clearly aren't professional dancers, and the choreography doesn't disguise their shortcomings. He's also careful to avoid the streetwise behavior so often inherent in roles created for young black men. Thomas (CBS's "The District"), with his gleaming smile, warm manner and dashing good looks, is definitely on the Denzel track. Along the way, Derek and Sara fall in love. Chenille and Derek soon have the middle-class Sara doing her thang in fashionably baggy, floor-dragging jeans. Sara, one of a handful of white students at the school, is befriended by Chenille (Kerry Washington) and her brother, Derek (Thomas), the John Travolta of the local hip-hop scene. After the funeral, she is obliged to move in with her estranged father (Terry Kinney), a struggling musician with a seedy flat on Chicago's South Side. Her mom had been on the way to watch her daughter dance, and the grieving, guilt-stricken teen hangs up her toe shoes and abandons her dream of attending Juilliard. Stiles ("10 Things I Hate About You") plays Sara, a small-town ballerina who discovers her inner booty when she transfers to an urban high school after her mother's death in a car crash. Then again, it's far from tepid teen fare, thanks largely to the sweet chemistry between up-and-comer Sean Patrick Thomas and leading lady Julia Stiles. "Save the Last Dance" takes its cues from the musical dramas of the '70s, but this otherwise engaging young-adult romance never quite catches Saturday night fever. native Sean Patrick Thomas star in "Save the Last Dance."
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