Flashdance

I don't think I'd ever actually seen the movie Flashdance before, as I was too young to go to the theater and see it when it originally came out. That, and I can't think of any adults I would have known at the time who would have been the sort of person to go see a movie like that. (The only exception, of course, being my uncle who ran the local Cinema 1-2-3 and would probably have run Flashdance. But that's different.) Anyhow, the Showtime family of channels has had it in their rotation, which gave me the chance to record it earlier in the year. It's coming on again multiple times, starting with 3:15 AM tomorrow (or overnight tonight), and some more times on Sunday Sept. 11, so I fired up the DVR and watched it.

You probably know the basic story. Jennifer Beals, who was about 19 at the time she made the movie, plays 18-year-old Alex Owens. Somewhere along the way, she learned how to weld, so she's living in Pittsburgh and working as a welder at what must be the quietest and most temperate steel mill known to man. That's not enough to pay the bills, not even for the converted warehouse she calls home, so she has a second job dancing at Mawby's, doing dances that would be PG-rated if you're watching from a distance but are deliberately shown on the screen to highlight the star's (well, her body doubles') assets. You see, Alex has a dream of becoming a "serious" dancer, at the local conservatory, even though 18 is rather too old for her to be starting in ballet. She confides her dreams to some sort of mentor, former Ziegfeld girl Hanna (Lilia Skala), who is so old that you know she's going to die before the movie ends, and has a best friend at Mawby's, Jeanie (Sunny Johnson), who would like to be a figure skater.

Alex also has a supervisor at the mill, Nick (Michael Nouri), who takes an interest in her. Alex keeps saying no, mostly because she has enough of a head on her shoulders to realize that getting in any sort of a relationship with the boss, even one as little as him buying lunch from the food truck, is going to cause issues. But he keeps pressing the issue, and more than that, has a rich ex-wife which allows him to live better than a steel mill supervisor ought to as well as to know some people in higher society.

Alex keeps dancing, and a fair portion of the movie is given over to dance scenes that are filmed more like music videos, which makes sense considering how the soundtrack used some recent pop hits and made a few other songs big hits (Giorgio Moroder and Irene Cara won the Oscar for writing the title song). But Jeanie fails at being a figure skater and decides to pay the bills by working at a strip club(!?), while Alex finally gets the courage to fill out an application. Unbeknownst to her, Nick decides to pull some strings.

Flashdance is known for the basic plot, as well as the songs it spawned. Other than that, there's a good reason it really hasn't stood the test of time. It's the sort of movie I'd call one of the great comedies of the 1980s, although the problem is that it's not supposed to be a comedy. It's ridiculous and only gets more ridiculous as the movie goes on, with really obvious plot twists. That, and the acting is pedestrian at best. Still, the absurdity of it all makes it fun to watch, and I suppose you can watch and see why there's a good reason the movie was so notable upon its original release.