YMMV / Save the Last Dance

• Awesome Music: The movie is full of great music, but special mention goes to Ice Cube's "You Can Do It" and Sarah's finale dance set to Athena Cage's "All Or Nothing."
• Designated Hero: Sarah is the protagonist, so naturally her actions are always justified. And while she's not a villain in any sense, some of the ways she treats people is a bit harsh and even though she's called out on in a few times by her dad, Nicki, Derek and Chenille, she never really has to apologize or show any accountability – in fact, in the case of Chenille, Chenille ends up apologizing to Sarah despite Chenille having a point about Sarah being a white woman sweeping in to charm seemingly the last decent Black guy in their circle. Sarah has a very naïve view of race ("There's only one world") and seems to constantly feel sorry for herself. Yes, her mother did die very recently, but Chenille has also grown up without her mother (or, seemingly, father) and despite being equally artistically talented as a designer, is seemingly not able to get any of the opportunities Sarah gets.
• Informed Ability: Like most dance movies, Sarah has a dance double, so Julia Stiles isn't going to look like she could get into Juilliard on her own. However, unlike other dance movies from a similar era, like Center Stage where the non-dancers in the cast faked it fairly well, in scenes where Stiles has to dance just a little bit, she looks like she's never entered a studio before. When she takes ballet class in Chicago, she has a completely flat, sickled foot – not the kind of thing that happens because you took a few months off. To add to it, her supposedly envelope-pushing, edgy solo audition dance is fairly basic, with even the dance double showing rather sloppy technique. She gets in to Juilliard on the spot.
• Narm: Sarah's audition dance has not aged well. A "Weekend Update" skit on a 2023 episode of Saturday Night Live poked fun at the routine; Julia Stiles herself did a cameo appearance.
• Signature Scene: Sarah's audition, the club dancing scenes, and she and Derek practicing in the studio.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Chenille. She's intelligent, kind and insightful, has plenty of talent and her own shit to deal with regarding Kenny and their child. And yet, the movie focuses entirely on Sarah and Derek's relationship, which at times feel like Narm-y woe-is-me drama, and many of the scenes giving Chenille more depth – including an explanation for why she takes Kenny back – were deleted.
  • Additionally, Roy – he makes a genuine effort to show love and provide for Sarah, even though he doesn't always know how, and seemingly has his own interesting life outside of Sarah's plot, but we never see any of it. Like Chenille, one of the few scenes to give him any extra depth was deleted.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Sarah is supposedly very academically smart, but is challenged her first day at her new school because her limited understanding of the world affects how effectively she can analyze literature. This is never brought up again, and her becoming increasingly streetsmart and being humbled by her more "urban" classmates doesn't seem to have an effect on her or the plot.
  • Sarah and Derek break up because she believes their lives are incompatible. They then get into their dream schools – Sarah's in New York, and Derek's in DC. This doesn't seem to ever be a problem or a plot point at all.

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