Director Adrian Lyne crafted a movie that’s less a narrative and more an assemblage of scenes and moments. So it still has a footprint, I just doubt that many people under 30 have actually seen Flashdance.)īut what matters most about Flashdance, it’s legacy, is the blueprint it provided for basically printing money. (The argument could be made, and I guess I’m making it now, that today Flashdance is best known for its soundtrack as opposed to the film itself. No one is asking for a Flashdance sequel. Flashdance is witchcraft.īut it’s weird, because Flashdance doesn’t have the cultural footprint today that other Bruckheimer and Simpson productions do, like, say, Top Gun or Beverly Hills Cop. And because Flashdance was concocted in a laboratory to be visually and audibly pleasing to humans, I was somehow riveted the whole time. Also, Robert Wuhl shows up as a patron of the cabaret in a roll so small that I wasn’t sure if he was in the movie or just happened to be hanging out there he night this was filmed.) It’s pretty much just montage after montage of Alex dancing. (Except for a subplot about a cook who wants to be a comedian. Now, mind you, everything I just explained is about 90 minutes of plot. Eventually she starts dating the owner of the steel mill who has a lot of contacts with local influencers and gets Alex an audition. But Alex’s dream is to be accepted at the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance, but doesn’t think she has the experience to get even an audition. Beals then removes her mask and shakes her hair out, which was no doubt to get some sort of 1983 audience to do a doubletake and say, “What?! A lady?!.”Īlex, short for Alexandra, works as a welder during the day, then dances at a cabaret at night, doing elaborate performances that are better than many music videos of the era. As the song fades we see a welder, with the name “Alex” written on the welder’s mask, hard at work in a Pittsburgh factory. But with Flashdance, it’s like getting a look at the raw source material.įlashdance both begins and ends with Irene Cara’s “What a Feeling.” This is smart because it’s an impossibly catchy song. And it’s the template Bruckheimer and Simpson would use to great effect in many more movies to come. It’s impossible to watch it and not feel happy. My brain knew what I was watching wasn’t particularly great, but yet at the same time, I felt great. It feels obvious today why critics dismissed Flashdance and yet audiences ate it up. Yet, while watching, this movie is pure adrenaline. Watching it now, I’m fairly sure I had seen it before on HBO or whatever, but the reason I couldn’t put a finger on the plot is because there’s barely a plot to speak of. What’s weird is, the thing about everything I just wrote in that previous paragraph almost dwarfs anything there is to say about the actual film. And it was the first producing collaboration between Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who would go on to produce some of the biggest blockbusters of the decade and beyond. It spawned two massively popular songs, “What a Feeling” by Irene Cara and “Maniac” by Michael Sembello. Most notably, it launched the career of Jennifer Beals, who stars as Alex. So, yes, smashcut to this week and a new Flashdance Blu-ray shows up at my door.įlashdance is remarkable for a few reasons. Because, well, there are so few new movies, a new perspective on something older didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Right after everything in our current world started getting delayed or canceled, I told several movie studios I’d be interested in any reissues or anniversary edition Blu-rays of catalog titles. A movie I think I saw as a kid, but, then again, the songs are so popular, maybe I’m just thinking of the music videos. Have you ever watched a movie and had no idea if you’ve ever seen it before or not? Like, maybe some of it feels familiar, but you can’t put a finger on if you’ve actually sat down and watched the whole thing before? For me, that’s Flashdance.
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