Flashdunce

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2002)

I just watched "Flashdance" for the first time since it came out and my opinion has not mellowed over time. I dubbed it "Flashdunce" then and it remains "Flashdunce" now, a film so lame, inconsequential and annoyingly dumb that it actually made the comparably silly "Footloose" look like "Singing in the Rain" by comparison. Actually, I'm being too hard on "Footloose," since it actually had a plot, some interesting characters, and a point-of-view (to say nothing of a POINT), as opposed to the pointless and silly "Flashdance."
But then why should I be surprised? "Flashdance" was co-written by notorious flop-meister Joe Eszterhaus, who followed this up with the intelligent "Jagged Edge," then dropped such neutron bombs as "Basic Instinct," "Showgirls," and "An Allen Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn" on an unsuspecting public. At least "Flashdance"'s seemingly untalented director Adrian Lyne went on to redeem himself with the "Play Misty for Me" rip-off "Fatal Attraction," to say nothing of "Lolita" and the superior Richard Gere-Diane Lane starrer "Unfaithful." Here he directs the nonexistent story as a serious of brain-numbing music videos, in which the lead actress (Jennifer Beals, who followed this up with an incredibly forgettable film career) is replaced by an obvious double in the dance sequences and then the audience treated like a bunch of idiots when the filmmakers denied a double was used and refused to give her credit for her obvious hard work. I have long contended that the incredible success of films like "Flashdance," which were written in crayon and cynically slapped together without a thought as to whether the plot makes sense or not, have led to the increasingly abysmal state of Hollywood films which are terribly written and forcefed to a braindead audience of Pavlovian dogs who are trained to drool and devour garbage like this.
Okay the plot: Beals is Alex, who dreams of a career as a serious dancer. She's only 18, yet she works as a welder by day and an exotic dancer by night. And by exotic dancer, I mean one that doesn't remove her clothes and gets no more dirty than dousing herself with water and shaking her fully-dressed booty at the audience. She ends up romancing her wealthy boss, helping out her loser collection of friends whenever she can, and visiting a little-old-lady friend who acts as a defacto grandmother to her. Can you see where this is going? Will Alex get an audition to the prestigious Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance? Will she fall in love with the boss? Will he help her get an audition? Will she get mad at her meddling boyfriend/boss, even though she meddles in everyone else's life? Will she see him with his sister and jealously break up with him without even asking who he's with? Will "Grandma" die? Will she pass her audition? Do we care?
Incidentally, not once does the film answer the most obvious question: just what the hell is a flashdance anyway? And why did audiences care so much about so little? Even at 94 minutes the film seems padded. As for nightmare double features, imagine this: this film was eventually paired with another megabomb from 1983, the Sylvester Stallone-directed "Saturday Night Fever" sequel "Staying Alive," which was rightfully considered the worst film of 1983 ("Flashdance" being runner-up). Pity poor Cynthia Rhodes, the beautiful and talented ingenue who is best known for co-starring in the infinitely better "Dirty Dancing." She appeared in both "Flashdance" and "Staying Alive." Now, that's what I call a bad year. (no stars)