Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I saw this movie for the first time in my life a few days ago and i must say i loved this movie.If you think about the 80's the picture you have in mind is pretty close to what you see on the screen when you put in Flashdance. From the first second onwards it blasts 80's synthesizer-sound in your eardrums, you see the typical hairstyles and clothes (that you would instantly relate to that era in your head). It's just a perfect emulation of that period of time, i felt like i was there, totally immersed and ready to go. So regarding the atmosphere it was just perfect for me. In addition Jennifer Beals as the main character Alex Owens delivers an enchanting performance. She acts in a natural and relatable way, i was with her from the beginning till the end and felt all of her struggle to become a professional dancer. Her female role also struck me as rather atypical. She works in a man dominated job, she is living her life on her own and takes the active part in her relationship to the male love-interest. It's impressing how dynamic and fast-paced the movie is, there is not a single moment that leaves you bored. To me it represents a perfect example of a feel good movie.Even though i seem to only have praise for it, i am completely aware that there are multiple doubtful performances and that story-wise it has not that much to offer. It's not something you think about for days or something that leaves a deeper and lasting impression inside of you. But it leaves you with a smile on your face, with energy in your feet and makes you ready to dance yourself.Yeah I know that all mostly sounds like I am an all-out fanboy, but what should you do when you catch the Feeling?

Style-over-substance films usually annoy me. When those movie are as bad as Flashdance, I just want to ask the people who made them what they were thinking. Actually, this was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who are well known for making films of cinematic gloss, but nothing with real humanity. The story is so simple, the whole thing is probably 50 minutes too long. This is basically Rocky if the story has dance scenes for filler, the numerous subplots went nowhere, and the characters weren't appealing.For a story, Jennifer Beals plays a young girl named Alex who wants to be a professional dancer, and not just to dance at a small nightclub. By day, she works as a welder at a steel mill; shocking since she is only 18. The steel mill boss's son falls in love with her and later tries to help her get into the professional dance group that she yearns to be a part of, if only she had more confidence.Everything that I highlighted in just three sentences is everything there is to know about the main story. Everything else is just music video-inspired dancing scenes (which, unfortunately, are mostly performed by Beals's body double instead of Beals herself) set to popular 80s songs, and subplots that go nowhere or are resolved in five minutes. For one thing, Alex sees the boss's son with his previous wife, she gets mad and throws a rock at his window, but the next day, he explains why his ex-wife was with him in the first place. Later, her friend joins a sleazy strip club, and Alex forces her to leave after three minutes. There is even an old woman who is Alex's friend, and conveniently, was also a famous dancer. Not enough time is spent on the relationship they have and the film never establishes how they met.The acting is average at best, with Beals giving the warmest performance of the whole cast, and most of the characters act like old stereotypes, such as the pathetic friend who makes useless jokes (which leads to another sub-plot that goes nowhere) and the aggressive jocks who have eyes for the main heroine. Alex herself is also the victim of the horrible screenplay. Close to the beginning of the film, she actually does come close to signing up for an audition for the dance group, but she backs out because she is afraid. Not a good enough reason? Well, the film still has an hour and fifteen minutes left, and if she did get her confidence at that moment, it would be nothing more than a short film.I have very little to say about Flashdance because the film offers so little. I guess the dance scenes are well shot, and Beals performance makes things a little more tolerable, but everything else is quite awful. Even some of the 80s songs are poor. This is easily one of the most uninteresting pieces of nothing ever made.

It takes practice to probe ourselves for insight of how we felt about something, it's not easy. Easier to numb ourselves, watch and forget it afterwards, but in this way we never really know anything. This is also in a roundabout way the point behind musicals, easy to be numbed, takes practice to probe and push yourself to create something that is true.The enemy of the protagonist in the musical or dance film then is compromise, mediocrity. It's the nagging worry that life will never amount to something, it will be drowned in routine—the antidote is dance, love, staging the circumstances that will permit purity of expression. In the musical this usually took the shape of showmen and women fighting to stage a show that sublimates the difficulties, this is also the case here, but with a twist.A final show is promised early on, a dance audition that makes or breaks her future (she thinks), failing which she's going to become just another 9 to 5 person chasing after the next bill. The place is glum Pittsburgh, she works in a factory by day. Around her we see the people who have been numbed by failure, lost their color—the failed comedian, her ice-rink dancer friend who ends up on the floor of a sleazy titty bar after a bad performance.They could have done something here. A bleak urban landscape instead of Broadway, the factory as the place where self is constructed to be only another cog in the machine—and yet in this place, dance, expression, sexuality. Her latenight show (she's an exotic dancer by night) struggling to find purity and truth in the midst of cheap thrills, still exhilarating in spite of how viewers consume it. Can dance become routine? Does it matter how the viewers see it?Their twist was something else. The final show is always postponed and the fight to stage it and dream to be someone are dredged from a pseudo Cassavetes desperation about life instead of using the snappy cadence of the musical. A bit of dance in the beginning and end and the whole middle is an hour of wallowing. The idea must have been, first make the viewer bleed, serve us 'reality' instead of a musical fairytale.But what I see is no less of a fairytale. A materialism about the difficulties but when it comes to the last release, the dance audition, we go back to the snappy, idealized Hollywood dance we expected all along. She triumphs of course. An awestruck committee member claps childishly at how good. The slice- of-life was merely an idealized style, a trope rather than commitment, so that it manages in one swoop to kill both the fun and the honesty. Terrible.

Last thing Flashdance page needs is another review, but I felt so compelled to write one, and I will keep it short. As someone not even born in the 80s I have only heard about Flashdance, but I knew the song before watching the movie. Sure the storyline feels sappy and the dialogue at times is very cliché; I don't want to give any spoilers I rather suggest you watch it before reading others' comments to get a feel of it yourself. But I guess what draws you in is not only the amazing song selection that works so well with the movie's rhythm but also Alex's character overall. She is very relatable, dignified and so much soaked into her own world of dreams that she takes you there with her. Here as far as the acting goes, I can say that Beals does a fine job; you can tell she feels Alex in her bones. I loved how comfortable Alex seemed in her own skin and surroundings meanwhile feeling isolated and lost. Would I watch it again? Maybe just to watch Alex's character and see some of the dance sequences. Yet, I recommend watching it to everyone else, as it is already a part of pop culture history.