Save the Last Dance enjoyed a profitable release in early 2001, with box-office earnings that exceeded anyone's expectations. Its performance illustrates the staying power of a formulaic film that avoids the pitfalls and clichés that would otherwise render it forgettable. Since there's nothing new here, you'll appreciate the original quirks in a character-based plot that's just around the corner from Flashdance, and just as familiar. Sara (Julia Stiles) gave up a promising ballet career when her mother was killed while rushing to attend her daughter's crucial audition to Juilliard; Sara blames herself for the accident, and at her new, mostly African-American high school in Chicago, she's uncertain of her future.

Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas) has no such doubts; his own future is bright, and his attraction to Sara is immediate; they connect (predictably), and Sara's dormant funk emerges, with Derek's coaching, as she learns hip-hop dancing in a local club. Obligatory subplots are equally routine: Derek's sister (Kerry Washington) is a single mom struggling with her child's absentee father; Derek's best friend (Fredro Starr) feels trapped in his gangster lifestyle; and Sara's once-estranged father (Terry Kinney) is doing his best to correct past mistakes. Within the confines of this standard follow-your-dream drama, director Thomas Carter capitalises on a script that allows these characters to be real, intelligent, and thoughtful about their lives and their futures. It's obvious that Stiles's dancing was intercut with that of a professional double, but that illusion hardly matters when the rest of the film's so earnestly positive and genuine. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

A sweet, silly and sincere comedy, Saving Grace resembles a Cheech and Chong pothead comedy, only instead of two scruffy lowlifes the film is about an aimless Scottish gardener and a middle-aged widow with a green thumb. Grace (Brenda Blethyn of Secrets and Lies and Little Voice) has just discovered that her recently deceased husband has left her with an enormous debt when her gardener Matthew (Craig Ferguson, The Big Tease) asks her to help him tend to his small, personal-use marijuana crop. Grace soon realises that they can turn her greenhouse into a hydroponics laboratory and turn out a profitable crop--if only they can keep the local constables at bay and then find a dealer to sell the stuff. Saving Grace has well-developed characters, intelligent dialogue, a charming and capable cast and clean, clear direction. But at heart it's still a marijuana comedy, with most of its funniest moments coming from the silly, stoned behaviour of elderly ladies and others. Nothing wrong with that, and Blethyn and Ferguson give the film a strong anchor. The ending goes a little over the top, but most of the film is well-grounded in genuine human behaviour. A sub-plot about Matthew's girlfriend's pregnancy is treated with respect and integrity. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

Six friends who haven't seen each other since their days at university, get together ten years later for a New Year's Eve party.