Impressive as a technical exercise but it feels more like a series of montages in search of a story

Rating: 4/10 (12 May 2016)

Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) is a welder by day and exotic dancer by night. However, neither of these things satisfy her so she decides to try and fulfil her true passion by enrolling in a ballet school.
Let's get one thing out of the way fairly early on - Flashdance is not a particularly good film. It's a film that opens up with a story, but it's a story that is never really expanded upon - director Adrian Lyne fills much of the running time up with montages that are mostly a cross between music videos and fitness workouts. The film also contains way too many scenes which seem to exist merely to elongate the running time - such as the 'ice skating' scene and the rather random scene where a police officer and a member of the public are directing traffic whilst dancing. From a technical point of view these things are quite impressive, but they have absolutely naff all to do with the story and consequently add very little to the picture.
Whilst Jennifer Beals was never going to win any awards for her performance here I actually thought that she did show moments of greatness; her scene with Michael Nouri about halfway through the film where she seemingly cries on cue was a good piece of cinema and Lyne takes full advantage of this moment. Although her performance here is hit and miss across the board, Beals is never less than charming at any given point in the film - she's adorable, charming and easy on the eye and she really does light up the screen whenever she's in front of the camera. Sadly this never really extends to her chemistry with Nouri and their romance is never convincing and this aspect clearly weakens the film slightly.
Although the film is filled with lots of excellent technical moments it's the story that really lets the film down as it seems to only be used to start and end the film - there's very little of substance in between. For this reason it's going to something that lovers of cinema or lovers of a good story are going to have a hard job caring about. Having said that it is perhaps passable as a date movie or may even work for those who can't resist a bit of 80's cheese (which this film reeks of BTW).
Where the film really stands strong is in its technical areas such as Choreography and Editing (which it receives academy nominations for). Whilst it's mostly good, sadly some of the hard work is undone in the final dance scene where it's pretty obvious that a body-double is used for some of Beals' scenes - check out the moment where she dances right in front of the judges where you can quite clearly see that it isn't Beals doing the dancing!!!
Despite some of the negatives it is a passable film, but with a story that's practically non-existent throughout its running time it's a pretty unmemorable film even though it is mildly entertaining at times.