Flashdance (1983)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Dreadfully Boring

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

(Flash Review)With a story as thin as a White Castle burger, the story gets totally squashed by the vibrant and avant-guard dance scenes which are over the top 80s in style. The director failed at evoking any emotion from the young protagonist dancer who tries to work her way from, believe it or not, a welder to getting accepted to a prestigious dance school. The failings lie within a story that is choppy, unfocused, poorly paced and edited. That being said, there is a killer break dancing scene and I give it credit for actually focusing on the dancing, more than other 80s dance-focused movies, which are boldly memorable. Lastly, why are there so many scenes of people walking down industrial train tracks in the 80s? There was a random scene of that here too.

Love musicals. Love dramas. Love a lot of films from the 80s, despite being aware of some of my friends who consider it one of the weaker decades for film. While there are certainly far worse musicals, there are also far better. 'Flashdance' is not without its moments but overall left me not completely feeling it.Where 'Flashdance' is most successful is in the soundtrack and dancing. The soundtrack is toe-tappingly infectious and is infused with a lot of energy. This is particularly so with "What a Feeling", wonderfully sung by Irene Cara, which won a worthy Oscar and became an iconic hit of the 80s. "Maniac" is a close second. The dance sequences are clearly strenuous, while also being high-octane in energy and having surprising grace.That is not to say that it doesn't have other good things elsewhere. Adrian Lynne directs very well, capturing perfectly the post-disco visual mood and general atmosphere of the time. 'Flashdance' looks good too, being cleverly shot and atmospherically lit and designed.However, the acting is really not great. Jennifer Beals seemed too lightweight for a pretty lewd character, and when showing a more aggressive, harder side it comes over as annoying and like she was uncomfortable doing it. She does fare better than Michael Nouri, whose character is obnoxious, bland and clichéd, all of those accentuated in Nouri's acting. If the rest of the cast are not being mentioned, it is because their contributions were not memorable.'Flashdance's' script is a complete mess. Cliché-ridden, cheesy and often tasteless. The story is vastly overshadowed by the film's style, music and dancing, it is barely existent and what there is pretty dull and preposterous, too often the opposite of feel-good or charming while the sordid-ness also feels over the top. Nice message, if not exactly new, but the very frothy and severely underdeveloped romance belongs somewhere else entirely.Overall, has good points but am not completely feeling it. 5/10 Bethany Cox

What makes a good film for me is that it is enjoyable, entertaining, gripping, likable and emotional. Flashdance without a doubt ticks all these five boxes. Flahdance is a very retro, cheesy entertaining film that is at no point boring and never drags, and is also a very clear symbol of the great 1980's and the night club exotic dancing scene of the time. Jennifer Beals puts down an amazing performance, as a dancer and as an actress. I guess the story comes down to the fact that reality bites, that life is tough, but if you push hard you just might make it.All in all, Flashdance despite its few undeniable faults is a very decent and enjoyable film in my opinion. As it mostly meets all of my requirements I am happy to give it a positive review. This film is one of the quintessential 80's films, that works well as a symbolic artifact of its time. I highly recommend this film to anyone who loves 80's.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

It takes practice to probe ourselves for insight of how we felt about something, it's not easy. Easier to numb ourselves, watch and forget it afterwards, but in this way we never really know anything. This is also in a roundabout way the point behind musicals, easy to be numbed, takes practice to probe and push yourself to create something that is true.The enemy of the protagonist in the musical or dance film then is compromise, mediocrity. It's the nagging worry that life will never amount to something, it will be drowned in routine—the antidote is dance, love, staging the circumstances that will permit purity of expression. In the musical this usually took the shape of showmen and women fighting to stage a show that sublimates the difficulties, this is also the case here, but with a twist.A final show is promised early on, a dance audition that makes or breaks her future (she thinks), failing which she's going to become just another 9 to 5 person chasing after the next bill. The place is glum Pittsburgh, she works in a factory by day. Around her we see the people who have been numbed by failure, lost their color—the failed comedian, her ice-rink dancer friend who ends up on the floor of a sleazy titty bar after a bad performance.They could have done something here. A bleak urban landscape instead of Broadway, the factory as the place where self is constructed to be only another cog in the machine—and yet in this place, dance, expression, sexuality. Her latenight show (she's an exotic dancer by night) struggling to find purity and truth in the midst of cheap thrills, still exhilarating in spite of how viewers consume it. Can dance become routine? Does it matter how the viewers see it?Their twist was something else. The final show is always postponed and the fight to stage it and dream to be someone are dredged from a pseudo Cassavetes desperation about life instead of using the snappy cadence of the musical. A bit of dance in the beginning and end and the whole middle is an hour of wallowing. The idea must have been, first make the viewer bleed, serve us 'reality' instead of a musical fairytale.But what I see is no less of a fairytale. A materialism about the difficulties but when it comes to the last release, the dance audition, we go back to the snappy, idealized Hollywood dance we expected all along. She triumphs of course. An awestruck committee member claps childishly at how good. The slice- of-life was merely an idealized style, a trope rather than commitment, so that it manages in one swoop to kill both the fun and the honesty. Terrible.