Dancers are dancers gone retarded.

The Movie: Save the Last Dance, directed by Thomas Carter
Recommendation: The girl side of Gwen.
Reason: Julia Stiles plus dancing. Woot.

This movie is one of those 1990's girly movies that was intended to be fresh and cool, and to take advantage of the MTV generation's love of hip hop, by setting up a white girl as a truly awesome hip hop dancer. Maybe I've been watching So You Think You Can Dance too much, but Julia Stiles really isn't that good. I'd actually call her pedestrian, possibly even bad. I don't know if she has classical training. Don't know if that was actually her on the stage, and I don't really care much if it was or wasn't. Whoever it was wasn't very good, and I pity their choreographer (unless the choreographer had any part of the selection of the dancer).

The plot's predictable, heartwarming in a saccharine sort of way, and does hit a few sweet spots. The acting from the male lead seemed genuine at least, even has he had to deliver such cliched lines as 'I'd like to be a pediatrician. I just really like kids.'. Julia Stiles is one of those actresses who should have just tried harder. She's cute enough to have taken Julia Robert's crown, but as it is it looks like Anna Paquin might snatch up that rising star (I'm not opposed, just so we have that vote on record).

The movie was alright, average teen girl fare without much meat behind it. It could have been better, but it also had the potential to be painfully worse. Thankfully, there was an absence of dancing Spiderman.

-119/365 down, 246/365 to go