What a feeling. What an icky, sticky feeling...

Rating: Null/10 (31 January 2005)

*Flashdance* -- what a feeling. What an icky, sticky feeling, like cotton candy that you can't get off your fingers -- total Eighties swill that has failed to congeal over time. So many funny, and so many dreadful moments that peck at the memory like a relentless chicken: Jennifer Beals dancing frenetically in place to the unbearable "Maniac", removing her bra without removing her sweatshirt, digging her foot into the guys crotch under the tableand the fashion statement  it is one of those rare movies that has a huge impact on fashion. Who among us wasn't ripping our sweatshirts to shreds and wearing legwarmers? Well, maybe not all of us, truebut she was certainly the most stylish welder to come down the pike in quite awhile. But *Flashdance* is not anything so much as a two hour music video about achieving your dream. Winning Oscars, Golden Globes and Grammys, the soundtrack was a huge success. Selling 700,000 copies in two weeks, not only for the title track, but for the regrettably aforementioned "Maniac" by Michael Sembello, "Romeo" by Donna Summer, and "He's A Dream" by Shandi, the soundtrack, along with the look, still haunts aerobics studios today. "When you let go of your dream, you die." But he's wrong  when you listen to dialogue like that, you die.