Jennifer Beals Is Hot; Incidentally, It Has A Good Story.

Rating: 9/10 (23 June 2009)

Spoilers
The good story in this movie is about the power of the human spirit and how it overcomes any odds.
Jennifer Beals, who I considered world's hottest woman, between 1984 and 1989, stars as Alex, a welder by day and an interpretive dancer in a club by night. Alex has an unstated dream of becoming a ballet dancer. She meets her welding supervisor Nick after he catches her act in the club. He likes her, and they date. She expresses her secret dream of doing ballet to him. He gets her an audition for her dream of joining a ballet company.
She finds out in the middle of the Fort Pitt tunnel in Pittsburgh that Nick got her the audition and goes into a rage at him, stopping all traffic under Mount Washington ("Stop the Car Nick!"). She refuses to go to the audition and goes into a big depression. Prior to the audition day, after she has not shown up for work in a week, Nick talks to her and tells her she is using him as a scapegoat for her real problem, which is her fear of performing poorly in front of all those well trained dance/ballet people. He then makes the true statement, when your dreams dies you die. Effectively he was telling Alex, you got to go and give it your all or you'll die inside. She then deals with a death of a relative, and has time to think about things.
Realizing that Nick had a belief in her that went beyond their relationship and Nick was also risking his reputation by telling the ballet company to take a look at her, and Nick has no say in which dancer is selected during these auditions, she shows up compete with the better trained dancers for the spot. She puts on the Irene Cara song, "What A Feeling" and dances showing her tremendous love for dancing. It has no resemblance to ballet, but the people judging can feel her incredible exuberance for dancing as she brings them alive and the movie audience can also feel this. You want to cheer when she runs gleefully out of the audition and jumps for joy to tell Nick she blew away her better trained competition and made it into the ballet company.