Most critics seem to agree: Save the Last Dance isn't worth saving. Sort of pleasant, though, they indicate.
Chris Vognar in The Dallas Morning News calls it "a perfectly adequate and fairly forgettable teen date movie ... mushier in the middle than an Oreo cookie."
Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times describes it as "tailor-made" for teenagers: "It's a decaf iced frappaccino, a confection that won't upset the stomachs of its target audience: the young crowd perched on the edge of pubescence and not quite prepared for the autumnal sophistication of, say, a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie."
But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times awards it three stars, writing: "The setup promises clichés, but the development is intelligent, the characters are more complicated than we expect, and the ending doesn't tie everything up in a predictable way."
