Save the Last Dance was originally released on DVD in 2001 a few months after its theatrical run. Paramount is now issuing a Special Collector’s Edition that is little more than a double dip timed to coincide with the release of the direct-to-video Save the Last Dance 2. If you’re not interested in the sequel, then the previous Save the Last Dance DVD is all you need. Even if you are interested in the sequel, then you still don’t need this release since you’re going to watch Save the Last Dance 2 anyway, regardless of the preview footage on this disc.

Bowing in theatres in January 2001, Save the Last Dance surprised everybody by raking in more than $90 million at the box office. For a film without major stars and buzz, grossing $90 million is like winning the lottery. Sadly, the movie does not quite deserve its handsome box office returns. Heavily promoted by MTV (one of the film’s production partners), Save the Last Dance won two MTV Movie Awards--Best Male Breakthrough Performance and Best Kiss.

Save the Last Dance follows a whole bunch of other films, plays, novels, etc. that has mined similar territory, and it suffers as a result of its derivative nature. The problem does not lie with the execution of the material but with the immense weight of cultural history that the film must bear. It plays as a hip-hop version of Romeo and Juliet, but it fails to find a convincing balance to the love story at its center. Ultimately, the movie comes up short, leaving every issue that it tries to discuss feeling half-baked.

Julia Stiles plays Sara, a ballet dancer who moves to an inner-city neighborhood in Chicago to live with her father after her mother dies in a car accident. She attends a high school that is decidedly different from her previous one; around these parts, WASPs are few and hard to find. Sara gets into an academic debate with Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) in her very first class, and she almost has her backpack stolen when she sets it on the floor while getting books from her locker. It turns out that Chenille (Kerry Washington), Derek’s sister, was just giving Sara a cautionary lesson on being alert in a crime-ridden school.

Sara makes fast friends with Chenille and Derek, and they invite her to the local dance club. Since she fails to make good on her promise to “dance circles” around Derek, he offers to meet with her after school to work on her hip-hop moves. Soon, he finds out that Sara used to harbor dreams of going to Juilliard to study dance. That discovery leads to his unearthing the source of Sara’s buried emotional distress.

The two (not quite star-crossed) lovers see each other through with their pursuit of life-long dreams--he to Georgetown University and then med school, she to the stage as a dancer. In their moments alone, Stiles and Thomas share a chemistry that belongs in a better film than this one. The leads deliver enjoyable, moving performances. They get to the heart of the matter in each of their scenes, and that leanness in acting is rather poetic. The two, even when arguing, manage to convey the moods of two smart people realistically working to sustain a relationship that they both want and need. Therefore, they try to make each moment count without drifting into sentimentality.

Sadly, the two characters are placed within the wider context of the rest of the script, which, were it not for its dramatic tone, would basically be a pastiched parody of all sorts of other movies. There are trifling scenes between Sara and Derek’s ex-girlfriend, Nikki (Bianca Lawson). The two get into a catfight that is, regrettably, a kinetic high point in a film that feels listless for a project about dancing. Isn’t the movie supposed to be “dancing circles” around its audience?

Finally, there is the dancing. Of all things, the dancing is deplorable. The scenes in the crowded club are cramped, confusing, and uninvolving. Stiles’s dance sequences are especially problematic. Throughout the film, she is seen dancing everywhere and practicing various styles of dance. It seems like she has all the moves down cold. The finale involves, of course, a Juilliard tryout. I was shocked to see a horrendous cut-and-paste sequence. It was atrociously obvious that Stiles WASN’T doing most of the dancing.

David McCoy