"Save the Last Dance 2" is a sequel to "Save the Last Dance" in that both films feature blond ballet dancers named Sara Johnson. They have little else in common. I don't even think it's the same Sara Johnson. The Sara Johnson in this movie is giggly, cocky, self-assured, and has a vague Polish accent, whereas the Sara Johnson in the first movie was Julia Stiles.

As direct-to-video sequels go, "Save the Last Dance 2" isn't as apocalyptically bad as, say, "Bambi II," but that's faint praise. It's a given that DTV sequels are awful; the only question is how awful they'll be, and this one is harmlessly stupid as opposed to aggressively irritating.

It's set the year after the 2001 film, with Sara (now played by Izabella Miko) now a freshman at Juilliard, where she hopes to become a prima ballerina. Her roommate, Zoe (Aubrey Dollar), is a wacky drama student. Her ballet instructor, Monique Delacroix (Jacqueline Bisset -- wait a minute, JACQUELINE BISSET?!), is a rigorous taskmaster.

But you will recall from "Save the Last Dance" that Sara's destiny is to be caught between the stiff, formal world of ballet and the loose, urban world of hip-hop. It is also her destiny, apparently, to only date black men, because she is soon hanging out with Miles (Columbus Short), a guest lecturer in her "Introduction to Hip-Hop" class who gets her movin' at a club one night and is amazed at how well this white girl can shake her moneymaker, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Sara adores Miles and has fun choreographing a hip-hop number for a project he's working on, but her ballet classes are so demanding that she hardly has time for both. Something's gotta give.

Something finally does give, though I'm not sure what it is. I know Sara is dismayed to learn a hilariously implausible fact about Miles (yes, even more implausible than Juilliard having an "Intro to Hip-Hop" course), and she is angry with him for "lying" to her. The thing is, he didn't lie about anything, at least not that I noticed. And I'm not sure why Zoe the roommate gets mad at her, either. In fact, I didn't even know she WAS mad until all of a sudden there was a scene where they reconciled. Did I somehow hit "chapter skip" on the remote control? Or have crappy DTV sequels become so efficient they now skip the conflicts altogether and head straight for the resolutions?

Here are a few of the subplots that the film introduces and then quickly abandons:

- A hip-hop dancer named Candy (Tracey "Tre" Armstrong), a friend of Miles', displays random, unprovoked hostility toward Sara, after which the character is hardly seen again.

- A ballet dancer (Maria Brooks) is jealous of Sara's success in the class, but also gives her advice and mentors her.

- Sara takes pills to help her stamina and strength, a fact which Delacroix discovers by peering into a wastebasket into which Sara has just vomited. (Yeah. I couldn't make that up.) The pills were only mentioned once before, and after this they are never mentioned again.

- Zoe the roommate is going to be in a play.

I get the feeling "Save the Last Dance 2" was hoping to be something like "Fame," but it's not even "Center Stage." Izabella Miko brings an unexpected shallowness to the role of Sara, though she does do all her own dancing. The only time the story is unpredictable is when it does things that don't make any sense; when it sticks to logical occurrences only, it's as by-the-numbers as they get, right down to the big dance number at the end that -- yes! -- combines ballet AND hip-hop.

As a side note, the Zoe character makes me laugh with her bugged-out randomness. "How tall are you?" she asks a guy she's just met, out of the blue. After hearing his answer, she says, "Do you want to wrestle?" WTF indeed.

If you're in it for the dancing, you should know that there is one major ballet scene and two major hip-hop scenes (the second of which is the aforementioned ballet/hip-hop fusion, but it's mostly hip-hop). These scenes are nicely choreographed and adequately performed, but I doubt you'd want to buy the film just for them. On the other hand, if you like cheesy, absurd stories about vain but passionate dancers, then I heartily recommend it.


THE DVD

There are optional English subtitles, including on the bonus materials. There are no alternate language tracks.

VIDEO: The anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer is decent but not particularly good. It's certainly not as pristine as you'd expect a BRAND-NEW film to be, with noticeable grain and some murky colors.

AUDIO: This is the disc's one good point. The sound is available two ways, in Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0. Both are remarkably clear, well-balanced and superbly mixed -- a definite bonus, given how much music there is in the movie.

EXTRAS: The only real extra is "On Their Toes: The Cast & Crew of 'Save the Last Dance 2' (13:22), a making-of featurette that is strictly average and uninformative.

The film's trailer as well as the trailer for the original "Save the Last Dance" are also included.


IN SUMMARY

No. You don't need to see this movie. If you liked "Save the Last Dance," this frothy, lame sequel will only make you sad. If you didn't like the first movie, or never saw it, then there's even less reason to subject yourself to this load.