Flashdance

Flashdance

D: Adrian Lyne (1983 ); with Jennifer Beals, Michael Nouri, Lilia Skala, Cynthia Rhodes.

Flashdance -- what a feeling! What an icky, sticky feeling, like cotton candy that you can't get off your fingers, total Eighties swill that has failed to congeal over time. This movie has so many funny, and so many dreadful, moments that peck at the memory like a relentless chicken: beals dancing frenetically in place to the unbearable "Maniac," removing her bra without removing her off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, digging her foot into the guy's crotch under the table. And the fashion statement! Flashdance is one of those rare movies that had a huge impact on fashion. Who among us wasn't ripping our sweatshirts to shreds and wearing legwarmers? Well, maybe not all of us, true, but Jennifer Beals was certainly the most stylish welder to come down the pike in quite a while. But Flashdance is not anything so much as a two-hour music video about achieving your dream. Winning Oscars, Golden Globes, and Grammys, the film and its soundtrack were a huge success. The album sold 700,000 copies in two weeks, not only for Irene Cara's title track, but also for the regrettable, aforementioned "Maniac" by Michael Sembello, as well as "Romeo" by Donna Summer, and "He's a Dream" by Shandi. The soundtrack, along with the look, still haunts aerobics studios today. "When you let go of your dream, you die," says one character. But that's wrong -- when you listen to dialogue like that, you die.