The movie follows Sara Johnson, a 17-year-old high-school student who sets her sights on being a professional ballerina, but she has to put her plans on hold and transfers to an urban Chicago school after her mother's death. There she falls in love with a black teen from the South Side with a rough, semi-criminal past.
31 January 1977, The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA
18 April 1971, Queens, New York, USA
2 January 1979, Chicago, Illinois, USA
12 June 1972, Denver, Colorado, USA
December 28, 2010
Formulaic teen romance with an MTV spin.
February 06, 2001
Stiles and Thomas supply what this movie needs most: a heartbeat.
January 12, 2001
It pays knowing respect not only to high school social politics, but also to racial politics among today's young people.
June 24, 2006
As teen melodrama, well, Carter's film is what it is; but for such a mainstream black-consciousness movie, at least it doesn't shy from addressing some touchy issues about masculinity, parenthood, and black attitudes to whites.
January 12, 2001
The intent is a feel-good film, sort of an American version of Billy Elliot and I didn't believe a minute of it.
May 22, 2003
It's not courageous enough to deviate from the teen movie formula more than a smidgeon.
May 20, 2003
Sara's got a sense of humor about how very uncool she is, and she proves to be a game girl.
December 06, 2005
Ultimately, this talented twosome [Stiles and Thomas] can only do so much with a script that continually lets them down at about every turn.
December 06, 2005
Performances throughout are solidly decent.
March 10, 2003
To the film's credit, it tries, and while it never really sings, it does deliver the dance.
March 22, 2002
A refreshingly friendly view of a romance between people of different pigmentation, an area where more respectable pictures still wimp out.
January 12, 2001
Squanders nice performances by Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas by confining them and the supporting cast to cookie-cutter roles and hackneyed inner-city subplots.
