Watched: 06/22/2025
Format: Prime
Viewing: Second all the way through
Director: Adrian Lyne
If you want an idea of what a different world I was in as a kid versus where we are 40 years on, I think Flashdance (1983) is a pretty interesting test.
First, Flashdance was huge back in the day. It was referenced in other movies, on TV and elsewhere. The soundtrack had a couple of great songs (I think think Gloria by Laura Branigan is phenomenal). And though it was Rated-R, it wasn't unusual for my classmates to have seen it by 5th grade, thanks to HBO.
It's also not a very good movie, but people loved it at the time. And I don't mean the movie is problematic by 2025 standards (which it is), but because it just sort of wanders around for long stretches. Like, nothing is happening. People walk around. They goof. The plot refuses to move along.
Oddly, there's barely any conflict. It's a movie that pitches that if you believe in yourself, sorta, and don't really do the work, your new, rich boyfriend will buy your way into a dance school. Because nothing about Alex's path to an elite ballet school makes a lick of sense.
It's a movie about an 18-year-old who falls for a guy who is in his late 30's, a guy who actively stalks her and pays a detective for information about her. That is their meet-cute. They go to strip clubs. There's a foot-job. It's a movie from an era when 18 was the drinking age, and when you left high school, you were now an adult.
How our hero, Alex (Jennifer Beals) winds up as a trained welder at 18, working nights in a club that does exotic dancing - but not stripping? - is a mystery. Also - her only friend is an elderly seamstress? What is happening here?
Ostensibly this movie is about young people chasing dreams, but the ice skater quits? The comedian fails? Our hero only gets her chance because her boyfriend can call a fellow rich guy who is on the board? Not exactly Fame. We don't even really know what happens to anyone, they just kind of say "whelp, the movie is over now".
Which is interesting, because this is a movie about working class people - something you'll see me pointing out repeatedly that we kinda abandoned after the 1980's unless someone decided that they wanted to try on a hillbilly accent or try to get Oscar consideration. But these characters are not going to achieve their dreams - they're going to keep working flipping burgers in this weird bar.
There's no rule that says characters all have to win, but I also think it's odd they just kind of leave our major supporting characters in jobless limbo at the end.
In many ways, this is Male Gaze: The Movie, something I'd forgotten about until watching (my first and only prior viewing was probably in 1997). In part, this is because it IS Male Gazey, and in part because Beals has a body double who is used extensively to perform dance sequences, and so they do close ups on body parts to not give away the game.
I hope you like butts, because this movie is 50% butts. I can only imagine the cocaine supply that made it's way through the edit bay as Bruckheimer and Simpson looked for every frame of butt they could splice into the final picture.
Jamie's favorite bit of trivia is that Beals is replaced by a male dancer in the final dance scene for the backspin, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it. But it explains why Beals' hair occasionally becomes a very thick wig.
Anyway, I don't mind having watched it again. It was not good. But not good in a way that's entertaining. After all, this is Joe Ezterhas on script, Peters and Guber as Executive producers, Simpson and Bruckheimer as producers, and even Lynda Obst* as an Associate Producer. We've got Giorgio Moroder on the score!
Beals would go on to be unnecessarily good-looking and in many movies. I never saw pretty much anyone else from this movie ever again (Robert Wuhl appears in two shots? And one of the leads died tragically a year later), but those folks behind the camera all did just fine.
*oh, shit! Lynda Obst died! I had no idea
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