Guilty Pleasure No. 13: Lambada (dir by Joel Silberg)

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last year, I was doing a search for dance scenes on YouTube and I came across a handful of scenes from a film called Lambada. The scenes all had an undeniably cheap look to them and featured a rather stiff dancer who was wearing one dangling earring. The scenes were so memorably bad that I promised myself that, if I ever got the chance, I would watch this Lambada.

Well, I got that chance last night when Lambada turned up on NUVOtv. I forced my BFF Evelyn to watch the movie with me because I thought I might want to use the movie for one of my What Evelyn and Lisa Watched Last Night reviews. However, as we watched Lambada, I realized that the only way to review this movie was to consider it as a guilty pleasure.

First released way back in 1990, Lambada tells the story of Mr. Laird (J. Eddie Peck), an idealistic math teacher in Beverly Hills by day and a sexy dancer at night. Did I mention that when Mr. Laird dances, he calls himself Blade? Because he so does!

However, Blade isn’t just dancing for fun or to deal with what appears to be a split personality. Instead, he uses dance skills to impress the poor kids at the clubs so that he can then lure them into a backroom where he helps them prepare to take the GED.

He’s a dancer with a conscience and who doesn’t love that, right?

However, eventually Mr. Laird is spotted dancing by Sandy (Melora Hardin, a decade and a half before playing Jan on The Office), one of his students from Beverly Hills. When he doesn’t respond to her crush, she reveals his secret and — for reasons that are never quite clear — this puts his job in jeopardy.

Why did Lambada turn out to be such a guilty pleasure?

Just consider the following:

1) Cast in the key role of “Blade” Laird, J. Eddie Peck looks good but gives a performance that almost epitomizes the concept of anti-charisma. When he’s teaching in Beverly Hills, he wears sexy glasses. When he’s dancing in the barrio, he loses the glasses and instead wears one dangling earring. When a female student in Beverly Hills hits on him, he awkwardly smiles. When he dances, he moves so stiffly that he resembles a mannequin on a treadmill. That’s about the extent of Peck’s performance.

2) Melora Hardin, on the other hand, is completely natural and likable in the role of Sandy but, even though this film was made 16 years before the premiere of the Office, Hardin has already picked up a lot of the techniques that she would use to make Jan Levinson-Gould such a memorable character. Every time that Sandy smiles nervously or looks annoyed by another character, it’s impossible not to be reminded of Jan struggling to manage Michael Scott. As Nathan Rabin pointed out in his review of this film over at the A.V. Club, Lambada really does feel like Jan Levinson: The Early Years.

3) If Lambada was made today, it would be called Twerking and, while watching, it was hard not to imagine Melora Hardin chasing J. Eddie Peck with a big foam finger.

4) An aggressively forgettable song called Set The Night On Fire is played about a hundred times over the course of the film. The song is so generic and forced, and everyone in the film has to pretend to be so in love with it, that it becomes oddly fascinating.

5) The club that Blade dances at has an upside down police car hanging from the ceiling. The club, itself, gives off a definite human trafficking vibe but that police car is pretty neat.

6) One of Mr. Laird’s Beverly Hills students is named Egghead. Naturally, he’s the smartest student and he’s obsessed with computers. Evelyn and I both found ourselves wondering if Egghead was just a nickname or if his parents actually named him that in order to force him to grow up to be intelligent. (Even Mr. Laird calls him Egghead, which — if that’s not the student’s name — seems a bit unprofessional for a teacher.) It may not sound like much but it provided us with hours of amusement.

7) There’s a scene where Egghead uses his computer to inspire an entire classroom to spontaneously start dancing. What makes this scene especially memorable is that the computer dances along with them.

8) Whenever Blade is teaching his GED class, the students respond to almost everything he says by cheering. If nothing else, I’m sure many teachers have fantasized about being as irrationally loved by their students as Blade.

9) Eventually, Blade’s GED students compete with the Beverly Hills students. No, it’s not a dance-off. It’s a math-off! That’s right — they’re competing to see who can correctly answer the most math questions. And, believe it or not, the future of Blade’s career depends on whether or not his GED students can win. Apparently, this is how the California educational system worked back in 1990.

10) Finally, the ultimate reason that Lambada is a guilty pleasure is because — regardless of how silly and ludicrous the film may seem to us today — it was actually produced and released into theaters. That means that, somewhere out there, there are people who actually paid money to see this movie. They may not admit it but they’re out there.

They’re out there.

Guilty Pleasure No. 12: Pandorum (dir. Christian Alvart)

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Arleigh

Sometimes a really bad film just does enough to push my buttons to actually make me like it. One such film was 2009’s scifi=thriller Pandorum.

The film was one of those that had some hype behind it prior to the film’s release. It had a nice marketing angle which included some very disturbing biomechanical imagery that harkened back to classic H.R. Giger artwork from both Alien and Dune. The film even had an interesting premise which was about a mental affliction caused by long exposure to space travel called “Pandorum”.

When the film finally came out to say that it bombed would be quite an understatement. While the ideas behind the film were interesting enough the overall execution of said ideas were haphazard at best and unimaginative at it’s worst. There’s nothing worst than a B-movie trying to stand out from the dregs and failing because it’s dull and boring. Yet, despite all that I’ve been fascinated by Pandorum ever since I’ve caught it on video.

German director Christian Alvart might be lacking some style in his direction of the film, but the cast itself manages to work their damnedest to make the film work. Ben Foster does his usual twitching performance where we don’t know if he’s about to go psycho on everyone around him or just curl up in the corner and start sobbing like a newborn. Dennis Quaid chews the scenery so much in every scene he’s in that his work in the film almost comes off as performance art.

Even the idea that people who were gentically-enhanced to adapt and evolve to their surroundings was a new one. The film even goes further by making the foundation of rapid evolution come from the ship itself. All the cannibalism involved just added that grindhouse touch to the proceedings.

The one thing that really brings me back to watching this film as one of my many guilty pleasure’s was this was the first film that introduced the world to Antje Traue. She’s better known as one of the few good things to come out of Man of Steel. Even in this first feature film for Antje Traue we already see examples of how much a badass she can be. It’s a shame that the film around her wasn’t better.

Pandorum never improves with each repeat viewing, but it doesn’t get worst either. It just straddles that fine line where one or two things changed for the better would’ve made it a good film. But for the life of me I have no idea why I like it and continue to watch it. Sometimes even bad films will push enough of the requisite buttons for people to like it and this film certainly pushed the right ones from me.

Guilty Pleasure No. 10: The Substitute (dir. by Robert Mandel)

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Arleigh

The most recent entry in the Guilty Pleasure series had Lisa Marie waxing poetically about the idealistic teacher in the “jungle” film The Principal. I counter and follow this up with a similar-themed film called The Substitute that came and went very quickly in the theaters (I’m not even sure if it did or just went straight to video) in 1996.

The Substitute stars veteran actor Tom Berenger (you may remember him in such films as Platoon, Major League and Sniper) as a Vietnam vet mercenary who ends up substituting as the substitute teacher for his girlfriend’s high school class as she recovers from an attack that has left her unable to teach. The girlfriend was played by one Diane Venora who in the very same year was in another little film called Heat by Michael Mann. These two polar opposite films in terms of their “quality” just shows you that when it comes to acting, unless one was a recognizable name then any role is a good role it seems.

Getting back to the film, Berenger’s character is the titular substitute in one of Miami’s worst inner-city high schools where, as the film’s tagline proudly proclaims, the most dangerous things about it was the students. That is until Berenger’s character shows up to find out who attacked his girlfriend and bring down the wrath of God himself (or at least Berenger’s character and members of his old mercenary team).

The film isn’t what one would call very subtle. We clearly see either two types of teachers in this school. There’s Berenger and his girlfriend who care for the young teens (the former woth tough love and the latter going about it in a more liberal sense) and then there are those who have given up on the school and just cashing in on a paycheck. This goes to the extreme with the school’s principal (played by Ernie Hudson) who begins to suspect that the new substitute might be more than he appears.

It’s the passive-aggressive interaction between the two roles played by Berenger and Hudson that made for some of the more hilarious sequences in the film.

Oh, another thing the film also involves a dangerous high school gang that uses the school as if it’s their own little fiefdom and the local drug kingpin using it as a way station to move heroin into the Miami inner-city school system. Oh, did I happen to mention that Marc Anthony plays the leader of the high school gang, because he sure does.

The Substitute almost plays out like how a teacher fed up with the inattentiveness of his students and the stress of doing a thankless job imagines the perfect scenario to “clean-up” the high school. It’s not through coddling and talking things out with the students. It’s about using military tactics to take out the dangers of gangs and drug dealers and tough love on those who are still worth saving.

Some have called the film as blatantly racist while others have pointed out how it is just an extreme version of the longstanding storyline of the educated and civilized white man saving the “natives” from themselves. What this film has over other school films of similar themes is how it doesn’t try to sugarcoat and hide behind ideals when it comes to it’s story. Plus, it’s such a guilty pleasure to see a typical 80’s action flick dressed up to be a late 90’s film. They really don’t make films like this anymore.

Guilty Pleasure No. 8: Paparazzi

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I once got into an argument with a friend of mine about whether or not a film could actually be so bad that it was good.

His argument was that bad, by its very definition, was the opposite of good and therefore, nothing bad could be good and vice versa.

My argument was Paparazzi.

First released back in 2004, Paparazzi tells the story of Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser). Bo is an up-and-coming super star. As the film begins, we’re told — by a breathless correspondent from E! News — that Bo has arrived. He’s starring in what promises to be “the world’s biggest action franchise.” Bo has a wife (Robin Tunney), a son, and a beautiful house on the beach. Whenever he goes jogging, huge groups of women magically materialize so that they can giggle as he runs by.

However, not everything is perfect in the world of Bo Laramie. Like far too many defenseless celebrities, he’s being harassed by the paparazzi. At first, Bo attempts to be polite. However, a demonic photographer named Rex (Tom Sizemore) refuses to stop trying to take pictures of Bo at his son’s soccer game. Things escalate until eventually, Bo’s son is in a coma and Bo is coming up with ludicrously elaborate ways to kill all of Rex’s colleagues.

The thing that distinguishes Paparazzi is not that it’s a revenge film. What distinguishes Paparazzi is that it seems to seriously be arguing that celebrities have the right to kill people who annoy them. Rex and his colleagues are portrayed as being pure evil (one even laughs maniacally after snapping a picture) while Bo is the victim who has to deal with the issues that come from being a multimillionaire. Even the homicide detective played by Dennis Farina seems to be continually on the verge of saying, “Right on!” while looking over the results of Bo’s handiwork.

It’s so ludicrous and stupid and over-the-top that it can’t help but also be a lot of fun.

Don’t get me wrong. Paparazzi is a terrible film. In fact, it’s so terrible that, if a group of aliens ever somehow saw Paparazzi, they would probably hop in their spaceship and come to Earth specifically to wipe out the human race. However, as bad as the film is, it’s also one of those films that you simply cannot look away from. Watching this film is like witnessing a tornado of pure mediocrity coming straight at you. You know that you should just stop watching and get to safety but it’s such an unexpectedly odd sight that you can’t look away. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it and it becomes impossible not to become fascinated by the fact that such a terrible film could actually exist.

Consider the following:

1) When he’s not busy killing photographers, Bo Laramie is filming a movie called Adrenaline Force 2. Seriously, that title is so generic that I couldn’t help but smile every time it was mentioned. Can you imagine anyone saying, “I want to see that new movie, what’s it called, uhmm… Adrenaline Force 2?”

2) Speaking of generic, do you think that anyone named Bo Laramie could ever possibly become the biggest film star in the world?

3) In the role of Bo Laramie, Cole Hauser seems like he’s as confused by this movie as everyone else. However, towards the end of the film, he starts to flash a psychotic little grin and the contrast between that grin and Laramie’s previously stoic facade is oddly charming.

4) You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Tom Sizemore play the world’s sleaziest photographer.

5) Vince Vaughn has a cameo as himself! He’s co-starring in Adrenaline Force 2.

6) Mel Gibson has a cameo as himself! He’s seen sitting in a psychologist’s office. (No, seriously…)

7) Matthew McConaughey has a cameo as himself! He shows up out-of-nowhere, tells Bo that it’s a pleasure to meet him, and then goes, “Alright, alright…”

8) Chris Rock has a cameo as a …. pizza deliveryman! At first, I assumed that Chris Rock was playing himself and I kept waiting for him to explain why he was delivering a pizza to Bo Laramie’s house. However, according to the end credits, Vaughn, McConaughey, and Gibson were playing themselves while Rock was playing the role of “Pizza Guy.”

9) Plotwise, this film invites the viewer to play a game of, “What if everyone in this film wasn’t a total and complete idiot?” For all the effort that Bo puts into plotting his revenge, it’s hard not to feel that he just got extremely lucky.

10) The film manages to be both silly and completely humorless at the same time. As a result, it’s a good for more than a few laughs.

11) There’s a scene where, out of nowhere, Bo recites an inner monologue about the price of fame that will remind observant viewers of Tony Bennett’s classic narration from The Oscar.

12) At one point, Tom Sizemore says, “I am going to destroy your life and eat your soul. And I can’t wait to do it.”

13) The film’s director used to be Mel Gibson’s hairdresser.

14) Finally, the film was produced by Mel Gibson and that probably means that the film actually is making a sincere case for murdering members of the paparazzi.

If ever a film has deserved the description of being so bad that it’s good, it is Paparazzi. Between the sense of entitlement, the feverish fantasies of revenge, and the out-of-nowhere celebrity cameos, Paparazzi is a film that has earned the title of guilty pleasure.

Guilty Pleasure No. 7: Final Destination 2

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Arleigh

The Final Destination series started off as a nice little horror film with a pretty original take on the slasher genre. We don’t have a psycho maniac on the loose killing off teens and pretty young adults. No, this film had Death itself stalking the usual photogenic and stereotypical young people (and the token adult). The film didn’t just have Death stalking and killing them but doing so in the most complex Rube Goldberg-like death scenes ever on film.

As with any horror film that has any sort of success this one received a sequel and then more sequels until it has become an almost bi-yearly event. My favorite of the series will always be the second film in the franchise.

Final Destination 2 is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but what it lacked in the fresh originality of the first film it more than made up in the inventiveness of it’s kills. Final Destination 2 makes absolutely no sense whatsoever other than Death decides to kill off a bunch of new young people. The film’s plot doesn’t even follow the same rules brought up in the first film. But none of that matters because it’s all about the kills and deaths. From the eye-opening freeway pile-up in the beginning of the film to a large plate glass literally squashing a teenage boy straight into the pavement, the kills in this film could never truly be topped by any of the others later on in the series.

As a guilty pleasure this one is always a must-see for me. Though I make sure I’m not going out on a drive any time soon after seeing it.

Guilty Pleasure No. 6: The Golden Child

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Arleigh

During the 80’s there were three names who earned the title of megastars. There was Sylvester Stallone with his Rocky and Rambo films. There was also Arnold Schwarzenneger who was pretty much the biggest action star of the decade. Then there’s Eddie Murphy who pretty much redefined the role of comedic action star. Yes, Murphy was an action star in his own right.

Once Murphy made a huge hit with the odd couple action comedy 48 Hours he began making one action comedy after the next. They all made money and to certain degree they were actually pretty good. There was one Murphy action comedy vehicle that was initially well-received by many when it came out in December of 1986, but has since seen a revisionist take from those who originally hyped up the film. I’m talking about The Golden Child.

Many who seem to have enjoyed and loved this film when it first came out has since backtracked to calling it one of the worst films of the 80’s. A film that indulges the ego of it’s star. While I agree with everything people have said about this film with each passing year I still can’t keep myself from enjoying it whenever it comes on cable (been awhile since it has). It was a fun flick when I first saw it as a 13 year-old and it continues to be fun.

Yes, it hasn’t aged well, but I think how it encompasses the kitchy-style of the 80’s not to mention the egocentricity of Murphy at the height of his stardom makes this one of my guilty pleasures. It even has a much y ounger, but still badass, Tywin Lannister playing the role of the main villain Sardo Numpsa aka Brother Numpsy.

Guilty Pleasure No. 5: Invasion U.S.A.

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Arleigh

Time to put up a new guilty pleasure that goes way, way back for me. This flick came out a year after the ultra-violent, thus equally awesome Red Dawn. As a very impressionable young boy that film had me and my brother and a select group of friends coming up with ways to form our very own Wolverines. While our plans were really just an excuse to play war games in the playground it was the following year in 1985 when this latest “guilty pleasure” had my brother and I moving up to a new level doomsday prepping.

That film was the Chuck Norris classic bloodbath: Invasion U.S.A.

Instead of the Soviet military invading the U.S. mainland this time around it would be Latin American communist guerrillas led by a Rogue KGB agent who would be doing the invading. Well, invading the suburbs and malls of Florida at least. Just like in true exploitation fashion the film would use the fear Americans had of foreign terrorists (this was the era of the airline hijackings, hostage takings and cafe bombings) finally putting it in their heads to strike at the American heartland.

But who would stop them if none other than the poor man’s Sylvester Stallone. He was no Rambo, but his name has become even more feared in popular culture. He is Chuck Norris and he’s the country’s only savior against hundreds of well-armed terrorist guerrillas and the rogue Soviet leaders. For a pre-teen set this was a flick that opened up the imagination to new levels of violence (thus awesome playground wargaming afterwards) and epic action. It’s not a surprise that it would be the Cannon Films group led by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (proprietors of some of the 80’s best and most violent action films of the era).

This film has become a sort of cult classic amongst action film aficionados. It’s literally a film that puts on the action gas from the start and doesn’t let up. Even has grindhouse stalwarts like Richard Lynch and Billy Drago to give it some exploitation creds.

They sure don’t make action flicks like this anymore. Which really is a damn bloody shame.

On a side note: this is one flick I hope Lisa Marie, Leonard and these Snarkalecs they seem to be hanging about it to view one night if it ever airs on TV.

Guilty Pleasure No. 4: The Jeremy Kyle Show

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’ll just be honest about this.

I do not like Jeremy Kyle.

Jeremy Kyle is an English talk show host. He hosts shows in both the United Kingdom and, since 2011, in the USA. On both shows, he deals with the usual daytime television topics: infidelity, out-of-control teenagers, interventions, DNA tests, and lie detectors. He is also perhaps the most unpleasant person that I have ever seen on television.

As opposed to other talk show hosts who pretend to be impartial, Jeremy Kyle is always quick to let us know that he hates his guests even more than we do. When someone confesses to cheating on his or her spouse, Jeremy reacts as if he was the one being cheated on. With a permanent scowl on his face and speaking in a tone of voice that reeks of manufactured contempt, Jeremy Kyle repeatedly tells us that his main concern is the children and that he has no respect for anyone who he feels has put their own selfish desires first.

“In the UK,” he’ll find an excuse to shout during every episode, “we have a saying — keep it in your trousers, mate!”

In many cases, Kyle’s guests deserve to be yelled at but that doesn’t make Jeremy Kyle any less annoying. For all of his shouting and his moral outrage, Jeremy Kyle is far too obvious a showman to be taken seriously as a sincere crusader for family values. He’s made a career out of exploiting that which he claims to condemn and the fact that he seems so totally humorless about that fact makes him just as bad as the people he has on his show. He’s a bully but he’s also a surprisingly ineffective one. The main image that one retains from the Jeremy Kyle Show is the sight of a husband and wife screaming at each other while Jeremy impotently demands that they both be quiet. The only time that Jeremy really has any control over his stage is when he has his ever present security team standing a few feet in front of him.

When I told my British friends that Jeremy Kyle now had a show in the States, they all had the same reaction. They apologized. As for me, I refused to sign that petition to deport Piers Morgan but if anyone starts a petition to deport Jeremy Kyle, I’ll be more than happy to put down my signature.

So, you may be asking, where does the pleasure from this guilty pleasure come from?

It comes from knowing that there’s always a possibility that one of Jeremy Kyle’s guests might lose it and punch Jeremy out. Every time I’ve seen the Jeremy Kyle Show, I’ve always been struck by just how much everyone on the stage appears to hate Jeremy. When I do watch this show, it’s because I’m waiting for those priceless moments when somebody will tell Jeremy to shut up and his face will briefly turn red. I doubt that I’m alone in laughing whenever a guest unexpectedly jumps to his feet and Jeremy reacts by scurrying behind a security guard. In those moments, Jeremy Kyle’s superior mask falls away and he’s revealed for the pathetic little martinet that he is.

On those rare occasions that I waste my time watching the Jeremy Kyle Show, I’m watching because something like this could happen:

That’s the real pleasure of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Guilty Pleasure No. 3: Every Rose Has Its Thorns

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Arleigh

Time for a new guilty pleasure and this time around we hit the music scene with a song that everyone seems to make fun of but whcih they also secretly love to sing-a-long to.

“Every Rose Has Its Thorns” by the hair metal group Poison has to be the cheesiest of all power ballad that came out during the 80’s hair metal era. The group were so intent on making it stand out from the rest of their hair metal brethren’s own power ballads that they decided to go all acoustic guitar to start things to give it that extra deep thoughts-theme. I will admit that I listened to this song like it was going out of style when it first came out.

What can I say? I was a sophomore in high school and the hormones were kicking in hard.

For someone whose own love of metal ranges from thrash, speed, power, Viking to black it’s such a rose amongst the bramble that this hair metal power ballad will still get me to sing along to this day. Though I usually try to make sure I’m alone….XD

Every Rose Has Its Thorns

We both lie silently still
in the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside

Was it something I said or something I did
Did my words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I tried
But I guess that’s why they say

Chorus:
Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

Yeah it does

I listen to her favorite song
playing on the radio
Hear the DJ say loves a game of easy come and
easy go
But I wonder does he know
Has he ever felt like this
And I know that you’d be here right now
If I could have let you know somehow
I guess

Chorus

Though it’s been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like the knife that cuts you the wound heals
but the scar, that scar remains

Solo

I know I could have saved our love that night
If I’d known what to say
Instead of makin’ love
We both made our separate ways

But now I hear you found somebody new
and that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife
I guess

Chorus

Guilty Pleasure No. 2: Save The Last Dance (dir by Thomas Carter)

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When Arleigh posted his pick for the first guilty pleasure review here on the Shattered Lens, it made me think about just what exactly constitutes a guilty pleasure.

I’ve always been very much of the belief that you should never feel guilty about feeling pleasure. Of course, speaking as someone who was raised Catholic, I can tell you that’s a lot easier said than done. However, I’ve always been the type who can find something to love in just about any film (with the exception of Avatar). I’ve never felt any sort of guilt about the fact that I can both love a film like Citizen Kane and a film like Confessions of a Go-Go Girl. If anything, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can see the value of a film like Confessions of a Go-Go Girl.

What, I wondered, could I possibly write about?

And that’s when I remembered Save The Last Dance.

Released in 2001 and produced by MTV films, Save the Last Dance tells the story of Sara (played by Julia Stiles), a high school dance student who fails her audition for Juilliard on the same day that her mother is killed in a car accident. The guilt-stricken Sara gives up on ballet, moves in with her estranged father, and transfers to an urban high school in Chicago.

Sara is literally the only white girl in the entire school but still manages to befriend Chenille (Kerry Washington), who takes her to a club where she meets Chenille’s brother, Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas). Despite the disapproval of apparently everyone else in Chicago, Sara and Derek start dating. Derek encourages Sara to try out for Juilliard again but, as the date of Sara’s audition approaches, Derek finds himself pressured to take part in a drive-by shooting.

When Save The Last Dance first came out, I was a 15 year-old ballet student whose life pretty much was all about dancing.. I went to the movie with some friends from dance class and I have to admit that we were pretty catty in the way that only dancers can be. Our lives, after all, revolved around dance and we weren’t about to cut Julia Stiles any slack just because she spent four months taking ballet lessons before making Save The Last Dance. While the rest of the audience was content to enjoy Save The Last Dance for what it was, we fixated on how awkward Julia looked during her second audition for Juilliard. We commented on how nervous her eyes looked whenever she was dancing and how she really didn’t have a dancer’s body.

As one of my friends put it, “There’s no way she would have gotten into Juilliard,” as if Save The Last Dance was meant to be a documentary about ballet as opposed to a teen romance film.

But you know what?

Though I never admitted it to my dance friends, I enjoyed Save The Last Dance when I first saw it and I still enjoy it today. Yes, it is obvious that Julia Stiles was not a trained ballet dancer and yes, the film’s look at race relations is more than a little bit idealized but so what? Sean Patrick Thomas is hot, the club scenes are fun (and Julia Stiles is more believable as a club dancer than as a ballerina), and director Thomas Carter is appropriately shameless when it comes to manipulating our emotions. When I watch this film now, instead of being critical of the film’s unrealistic portrayal of the dancer’s life, I instead see it as a dramatization of every girl’s ideal fantasy. Like the best fantasies, Save The Last Dance tells us that — if you just believe — you can have it all: hip friends to protect you, a hot guy to love you, and a second chance to go to Juilliard.

Or as Derek says to Sara, “You can do it. Sara, you were born to do it.”

(Incidentally, if not for a memorable supporting character in Save The Last Dance, a New Jersey girl named Nicole Polizzi would never have been nicknamed Snookie. So there’s that, as well.)

And so, with this post, allow me to officially announce to the world: I love Save The Last Dance and I am not ashamed!

To quote the tagline from Save The Last Dance’s theatrical poster, “The only person you need to be is yourself.”