Flashdance (1983)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Alex Owens, a young woman juggling between two odd jobs, aspires to become a successful ballet dancer. Nick, who is her boss and lover, supports and encourages her to fulfil her dream.
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What critics compared Flashdance to
A big clue: Billy persists in evoking the 1983 movie “Flashdance” when making what he thinks are inspirational speeches, a cultural reference that draws mostly blank stares from the other interns.
This comedy bumbles out of the gate with a screenplay given to frequent dumbness and obsessions with 1980s pop culture references, mostly to do with Jennifer Beals' onstage shower in "Flashdance."
And he does seem stuck in 1983, so obsessed is he with the film ‘‘Flashdance.’’
Unlike the raunchy Wedding Crashers, it's rated PG-13 instead of R, it avoids the strain of mean-spiritedness that's in vogue in modern comedy, and its leads are now more comfortable making jokes about 1953's Stalag 17 and 1983's Flashdance than anything from the brave new world of 2013.
After all, how heartless do you need to be to lay down cash for the opportunity to smugly look down upon two fading stars groveling for the last crumbs of stardom in a predatory movie that feeds off the picked-over bones of “Flashdance” and Alanis Morissette?
We first meet Des when he is assuaging the pain of his break-up with Nina (Jennifer Beals, wasted as nothing more than a cheeky reference to her own Flashdance-born disco credibility) by confessing to her his recently-acknowledged homosexuality.
Sorry, but the sight of Jennifer Aniston in translucent underwear imitating Jennifer Beals from Flashdance (to the wrong music) just ain't worth it.
You remember, the boyfriend from Flashdance.
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…and often nothing more than a couple of seconds long, as when Puss-in Boots does a quick version of the iconic Flashdance image of Jennifer Beals being doused with water.
But mostly the film cuts its pathos with humor, whether it's portraying the men gyrating to Donna Summer in a shuffling welfare line or critiquing Jennifer Beals's welding abilities in Flashdance.
Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat may have codified onscreen sex (not to mention the “erotic thriller” template) for normies in 1981, but Lyne’s Flashdance , 9 ½ Weeks , and Fatal Attraction were important cultural flash points that not only attracted audiences in droves but inspired a host of imitators of their grown-up content and muscular visual language.
Other Lyne big deals have been “Flashdance” (1983) and “Fatal Attraction” (1987).
Adrian Lyne has made some bangers: Flashdance (1983), 9 ½ Weeks (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987), Indecent Proposal (1993), and more.
The “Flashdance” and “Fatal Attraction” helmer has a knack for sexually charged, low-light whatsits of this nature — and he hasn’t directed a feature in 20 years, so he seems ready to get back in the sandbox and play.
Ah well, the same audiences who bought Jennifer Beals as a rugged shipyard welder in "Flashdance"--from the same studio--will probably have no trouble with Swayze's banker.
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This, you may recall, is the movie that aroused the ire of gay groups, that seemed destined for an NC-17 rating (though, of course, it was trimmed to get a more commercially desirable R), that had a script by Joe Eszterhas (Jagged Edge, Flashdance) that fetched a record $3 million.
From Lyne, the dis-erotic auteur of Fatal Attraction , 9½ Weeks , and Indecent Proposal , comes the glossy smuttiness, self-conscious artistry tarting up a weird puritanism about sex; from Eszterhas, whose Basic Instinct script almost looks classy next to his later work on Showgirls , we can see certain scuzzy fingerprints along with what can only be described a nasty-minded, functional concept of femininity; and Bruckheimer, whose eye for giving the broadest possible audience exactly what we didn't know we wanted until he gave it to us ("A movie based on a theme park boat ride with Johnny Depp playing a pirate captain as a cross between Keith Richards and a drag queen?
And scribe Joe Eszterhas moved from Flashdance to Basic Instinct and Showgirls .
Sex for Lyne is a Fatal Attraction, a Flashdance, an Indecent Proposal, or it's a fevered episode that occurs in 9 1/2 Weeks or with a nymphet named Lolita.
It's so perfect I'm thinking about forgiving Adrian Lyne for "Flashdance."