Save the Last Dance (2001) on Netflix
PG-1320011h 52mDramaMusicRomance
After her mother's death in a car crash, ballet dancer Sara Johnson moves into her estranged father's South Side apartment. She befriends Chenille, whose brother Derek dances hip hop.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.2/1069,594 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes54%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sara Johnson, a 17-year-old ballet dancer in a Chicago suburb, has her eye on the Juilliard School. She fails her audition, and her mother is killed in a car accident while driving to it. Wracked with guilt, Sara gives up ballet and settles into her estranged father Roy's apartment on the South Side, where she enrolls at a mostly black high school and is one of a few white students. Chenille, a teenage single mother, takes her to a club called Stepps, her first taste of hip hop. There she dances with Chenille's brother Derek, a studious student who plans to attend Georgetown and become a pediatrician. Derek offers to help her blend hip hop into her ballet-trained style.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Save the Last Dance (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Julia Stiles landed the role of Sara after director Thomas Carter saw her dance scene in 10 Things I Hate About You. Lacking dance experience, she prepared with two months of intensive training for the ballet scenes and rehearsed the hip hop choreography separately.
- During a Weekend Update segment on the December 9, 2023 episode of Saturday Night Live, comedian Chloe Fineman performed Stiles's dance from the end of the film, and Stiles herself made a surprise cameo on the show.
- The film's idea of "hip hop dancing", characterised as amounting to "random fingerpointing and sitting awkwardly in a chair", has gone on to spawn viral memes on social media.
- The film debuted at number 1 at the North American box office with $27.5 million, and although it fell 44% the following weekend it held the top spot for another week, finishing with $91,057,006 in the US and $131.7 million worldwide.
