The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a fleeting yet vibrant explosion of teen movies, a genre that seemed to flourish and fade almost overnight. In one moment, films like Can’t Hardly Wait were enjoying moderate success, and the next, a slew of titles such as She’s All That, Cruel Intentions, 10 Things I Hate About You, and American Pie were dominating the cultural landscape. This era felt like a wild, youthful celebration of the end of the millennium, but as the year 2000 dawned, it appeared as if the teen movie stars had moved on to the next phase of their careers, with varying degrees of success. In this context, it seems fitting that Julia Stiles closed her chapter of youth-oriented cinema with a film aptly named Save the Last Dance.

Opening to notable box office success in early January, Save the Last Dance joined the ranks of memorable dance-themed romances. It managed to outshine all its teen movie predecessors in ticket sales, except for the enduring American Pie series. As Sarah Michelle Gellar aptly put it later, “teen horniness is not a crime.” Part of the film’s charm lay in its narrative that extended beyond the typical high school experience, focusing instead on the transformative journey of its protagonist, Sara, portrayed by Julia Stiles. Sara, a teenager plagued by guilt over her mother’s tragic death in a car accident en route to her ballet audition, abandons her dream of dancing. However, she soon finds herself drawn back to dance, combining classical ballet with hip-hop, influenced by her new surroundings at a predominantly Black high school in Chicago’s South Side.

Sara’s new adventure unfolds with the encouragement of her new friend Chenille, played by a young Kerry Washington, and Chenille’s brother Derek, played by Sean Patrick Thomas. Derek, portrayed as a responsible and charismatic figure, becomes Sara’s guide and inspiration. Yet, looking back, Derek’s characterization raises some discomfort. The script goes to great lengths to paint him as one of the few virtuous Black students, contrasting sharply with other portrayals in the film. This narrative choice inadvertently highlights racial stereotypes and, despite being directed by Thomas Carter, a Black filmmaker, the movie tends to lean heavily on a white perspective, particularly through Sara’s eyes.

This angle likely contributed to the film’s success, resonating with a suburban audience cautiously exploring Black culture. At its core, Save the Last Dance is undeniably a vehicle for Julia Stiles, perfectly cast as the earnest, intelligent protagonist rediscovering her passion through young love. While some dance sequences suggest Stiles might not have performed all the intricate choreography, her charm with Thomas is undeniable. Their chemistry lights up the screen in their playful exchanges, as he introduces her to the world of urban dance. Stiles’ theatrical flair adds a delightful touch to her role, embodying a character who struggles to maintain her overachiever composure, only to be won over by genuine emotion.

That perspective was probably also, admittedly, a big part of the movie’s success, ably capturing the imagination of the suburban-white-girl-cautiously-interested-in-Black-culture demographic. In other words, this is an unequivocal Julia Stiles vehicle, with her ideally cast as the serious-minded nerd reawakened by young love. She’s ideally cast in theory, anyway. Some of the movie’s dancing is shot and cut in such a way that it’s easy to imagine that Stiles may not be doing all of the fanciest footwork herself, even though at least some of it clearly is her. She and Thomas are charming in their flirtatious early scenes together, circling each other as he shows her the ropes of urban dance. Stiles has a slightly theatrical quality that makes her a fun rom-com foil; it’s as if she’s trying her best to roll her eyes as a precocious overachiever, but gets undone by her own stubborn sincerity.

Ultimately, though, the movie skews more toward soapy social melodrama than dance musical, and the scenes in between the dance moments sag. So maybe it was by accidental counterexample that Save the Last Dance did wind up kicking off an era of youth-oriented dance musicals, much more so than another round of high-school romances. Most prominently, five years later a movie ripped off this movie and reversed it, with a hip-hop dancer trying his hand at ballet, and the Step Up series was born. The superior Step Up sequels also took their cues from Save the Last Dance, realizing that street-level dancing infused with other styles is more fun than ballet with a small dose of hip-hop.

In the meantime, Stiles had hit it bigger than much of her teen-movie cohort; bigger than, say, Freddie Prinze Jr., Matthew Lillard, or Sarah Michelle Gellar, who were all regressing into a Scooby-Doo movie the same summer that Stiles jumped into more grown-up fare with The Bourne Identity. Despite her ongoing supporting role in that franchise, though, she never quite transcended her teen-movie origins, which makes Save the Last Dance, about a young woman preparing for the next phase of her life, a little more poignant in retrospect. (More so, anyway, than her previous crack at graduating to college-level courses, the risible Down to You with Prinze.) Corny as the movie is, it is iconic to a certain generation, as Chloe Fineman illustrated (with Stiles’ good-natured participation) on Saturday Night Live a few years ago. It may have been the last gasp of a particular teen-movie era, but Stiles got to take a hell of a cute senior-year photo.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.