Flashdance: Critic Reviews

The story doesn't help Miss Beals either, because she's at her least convincing when having to register any emotion other than rapture.

Jennifer Beals shouldn't feel bad. She is a natural talent, she is fresh and engaging here, and only needs to find an agent with a natural talent for turning down scripts.

Silly but energetic.

Virtually plotless, exceedingly thin on characterization and sociologically laughable, pic at least lives up to its title by offering an anthology of extraordinarily flashy dance numbers.

Cinderella tale with sex, Spandex, and '80s pop.

Crudely-made in just about every possible way, Flashdance has only nostalgia going for it.

a beautiful piece of retro culture

Nothing but glossy fluff.

As far as date movies go, this is effective enough, especially the scene where Beals demonstrates how to change her top without taking off her sweater.

There's something real in here, and it could have made it to the screen, but the people involved were too shortsighted to see it through.

A simplistic fairy tale, directed by Lyne in a trashy, superficially glitzy style, with pretense to realism in its on-location shooting and a woman who works as a welder, and the kind of postmodernism that's mostly evident in the heroine's name, Alex.

"what a feeling" indeed.

Depressing to think that this was a huge hit on the back of the Irene Cara hit single, since there's absolutely nothing to it.

Step-setter of its time.

An utterly preposterous piece of Reagan-era bootstrapping propaganda.

Cookie-cutter filmmaking at its most predictable.

A stylish, fast-paced let's-get-physical movie