The Unfaithful Sequel

There are some films that stick with us, that can be watched over and over again. For me, it was Thomas Carter’s Save the Last Dance (2001) - there were many dance genre films around this time, but this is the one that started it all. Before Step Up or Honey, Save the Last Dance was the first to combine hip-hop and ballet in a film while tackling difficult and poignant subject matters.

Julia Stiles, Sean Patrick Thomas and Kerry Washington star in this romance film about a teenage interracial couple who fall in love through dance despite the racial tensions in their community. Sara (Stiles) loses the zeal for dancing after the sudden demise of her mother. However, she meets Derek (Patrick Thomas) who helps her battle her trauma and pursue her passion.

As the film, celebrated its 20 anniversary this year; I thought this was a perfect time to reflect on this series - and why we didn't need the sequel we got. While the original Dance film portrayed nuance and depth, each character felt developed enough that they could carry a sequel or spinoff by themselves - this was mainly down to Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards' water-tight and well-written screenplay. It's also worth noting this film won and was nominated for several awards upon its release:

• The 2001 MTV Movie Awards, winning in the category "Best Kiss" for Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas, who also won "Breakthrough Male Performance". Also being nominated for "Best Female Performance" for Julia Stiles and "Best Dance Sequence" for a scene in the hip hop club.
• The 2001 Teen Choice Awards, winning in the categories "Choice Movie: Actress" for Julia Stiles, "Choice Movie: Breakout Star" for Kerry Washington and "Choice Movie: Fight Scene" for Julia Stiles and Bianca Lawson; and being nominated for "Choice Movie: Drama".
• The 2001 Young Hollywood Awards, winning in the category "Standout Performance — Male" for Sean Patrick Thomas.
• It was also nominated for the 2002 Black Reel Awards in the category "Theatrical — Best Supporting Actress" for Kerry Washington and the 2002 Golden Reel Awards in the category "Best Sound Editing — Music, Musical Feature Film" for the music editor Michael T. Ryan.

The film concluded on a pretty open ending - Sara auditioned again for Julliard and got in, Derek had been accepted into medical school, Chenille had begun to reconcile with the father of her childhood and Sara and Derek rekindled their romance. The storylines had been wrapped up, but left open enough for a potential sequel to continue certain storylines. Or even do what Step Up did, with sequels being an anthology with new characters and storylines loosely connected to the predecessor. We didn't really need a sequel in this case, but we got one...

For years, I had avoided this film after hearing negative reviews, but a few years ago I was given this film on DVD and decided to bite the bullet and see what the fuss was all about. Everything I suspected about the production quality and writing was proven right.

There are many routes a sequel could have gone down, but instead we got a direct-to-video sequel, Save the Last Dance 2, released in 2006 that was quite frankly an insult to the original. This film saw David Petrarca taking over as director and Kwame Nyanning penning the screenplay. As well as having a different creative team, this film recast Sara with Izabella Miko taking on the role and none of the previous characters or plots were revisited. In many ways, this wasn’t a sequel at all. This is the equivalent of when Michelle Pfeiffer starred in the universally hated Grease 2.

Where this film truly failed was the writing - recasting the character is considerably understandable due to Stiles being six years older when this film story-wise picked up months after the prequel, but the writing of Sara was vastly changed.

Miko and Stiles’ incarnations of Sara are two different people completely, both in how they’re written and played. Although Miko’s dancing is considerably better - given Stiles only had a few months to train for the ballet dancing role and needed a stunt double at times, she did well to her credit - Miko failed to capture the girl-next-door mannerisms and characteristics of Sara.

As well as this film being unfaithful to the protagonist, it is also unfaithful to the themes of the prequel. The story itself was in comparison, vapid and shallow. This film’s conflict barely scratches the surface on any meaningful character arcs - Juilliard was portrayed like a obnoxious boarding school and the romance between Sara and Miles - a dynamic I never actually got - lacked any proper chemistry.

My dislike of this film may not be so bad if this wasn’t trying to be a sequel and totally missing what made the prequel so beloved simultaneously.

The characters are literally walking stereotypes and this film completely omits any of the social class or racial themes seen in the first Dance, instead casting a very heterosexual white-washed cast and relying heavily on cliches.

The conflict throughout the film was so juvenile, it was painful to sit through. Sara’s conflict with her new love interest isn’t even conflict at all - she accused him of lying to her about his parentage, but in reality they never had the conversation. That’s hardly a lie that shouldn’t derail a whole relationship… but it does. Also with this rewritten Sara, her ambitious go out the window and she throws away a fantastic opportunity on a whim that made no sense. This script took the trials and achievements of a protagonist and disregarded that character development completely.

This film had a great opportunity to explore the complexities of higher education, especially at a prestigious university and leaving everything and everyone you know. Instead, this film was a dumbed down follow-up to a brilliant film. If you are going to be writing a sequel to an established story, there’s one crucial role ALL writers must follow - stay faithful to the characters.

This film failed in staying faithful to the original, which is why I’ve only ever watched this sequel once and I have no plans to ever repeat that experience. Some films should either stay as a standalone or hire a better cast, crew and writer to do the sequel justice.

Vocal is having a limited time $1/71p deal for the first month for new signups to Vocal Plus.

This site has really kept me motivated in writing outside script work and analysing screenwriting and storytelling from multiple angles. There are many different communities and themes, so there's plenty of reading material if you have writers block. Follow this link and get writing!