I hate to repeatedly knock the celebrated movie studio that brought us all the Godfather and Indiana Jones films, but it’s gotta be said: despite being a very profitable time for those execs above the Mountaintop, the early ‘80s were an ugly time for Paramount. Since Saturday Night Fever was a monumental success in 1977, the studio churned out the exact same formula for the next several years. First up was the wholly ridiculous (and therefore very popular) Urban Cowboy, a film so astonishingly adored that it sparked a nationwide frenzy for… cowboy stuff.
Hoping to deviate only slightly from this formula, Paramount then Xeroxed together movies like Footloose (for the boys) and (for the women) Flashdance – each very successful in its day and each an absolute chore to sit through nowadays. These movies are memorable mainly for their ‘time capsule’ value and their uniform devotion to over baked dramatic silliness… yet I know dozens of people who love both of ‘em. Ugh.
Cookie-cutter filmmaking at its most predictable, Flashdance offers us an unhappy female welder who dreams of becoming a famous dancer. (Not unlike the plot of the three films mentioned above.) There are, of course, adversaries to whine over (and eventually defeat), loyal pals to argue with, and love interests to contend with. Every third scene is a musical montage or 90-second rock video. The flick (very simplistically) is a safe little female-empowerment tale, so obviously it will have many supporters – most of whom will soon be emailing me for my nasty criticisms of this beloved (yet stupid; c’mon admit it) movie.
Though it made a boatload of money, Flashdance may best be remembered for its impact on modern fashion. Admit it ladies; you bought leg warmers and headbands and some of those torn crooked holey T-shirts. I bet you even have some photographs of you and your friends dressed up in full Jennifer Beals regalia. The reason those photos are staggeringly humiliating is the same reason that Flashdance is not a good film. Fashionably lit dance sequences punctuated by dramatics so mundane they’d be edited out of Spanish soap operas may not make for a good movie. But man, those clothes were popular, eh?
