R, 1 hr. 36 min. Directed By:
Adrian Lyne. Release Date:
Jan 1, 1983. DVD Release Date: Oct
8, 2002.
Okay, okay. I get it.
She’s a steel town girl on a Saturday night, looking for the fight of
her life. But in the wake of having
watched Flashdance, what do I
actually know about Alex? Not a whole
lot. I actually learned more about Alex watching reruns of Family Guy and American Dad than I did by watching this.
I’ve never done really well with
that “man vs. man” conflict nonsense. I
have little patience in the real world for people who can’t put out a modicum
of effort and at least TRY for what they want to accomplish, so watching a
movie about a woman who is just fine other than she wants to be a dancer and
doesn’t quite have the testicular fortitude to make it happen. Jennifer Beals was too pretty to be Alex…
there’s just something that doesn’t jive about a beautiful woman with a null
personality. I know it happens in real
life, but I’m not going to sit around and involve myself in that woman’s life
for two hours. I need more, and Flashdance just didn’t deliver.
I’m also not really sure about the
cast in this hot mess. I’m not going to deny the hotness of Jennifer Beals
circa 1983… because well, God would have to strike me down dead with lightning
or the MIR station or something. But she
was stiff and awkward in a way that wouldn’t be natural to a teenaged girl who
looked like that. And, she was the most
likable member of the cast except for her dog, Grunt, I think his name
was. That dog was awesome.
I’m a little too young to have
picked up this whole Flashdance craze
back in the days, but I seriously don’t get it in the same way I don’t get the Step Up craze today. Really, what’s the big deal? Dance, or don’t. In the stream of things, dancing isn’t going
to save your life or for most folks isn’t going to keep you feed and with a
roof over your head…
I also noted that on the DVD sleeve
for this Netflix shipment it reads that this movie put “Jennifer Beals on the
map.” My question is WHAT FRIGGING
MAP? I own two movies she’s been in, one
of them is in my top 10 movies of all time, and I’d never seen her before
today.
Basically, take a pass if you don’t
need to listed to the Flashdance
theme song a whole lot. It wasn’t as bad
as St. Elmo’s Fire… but it was close.
