Flashdance is your everyday, typical Cinderella story about Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals - 17), your everyday welder/exotic dancer who dances in a small dive that features erotic dancers (well, as erotic as the eighties could manage) that only strip down to (wet) lingerie. Mawby's Bar is so small that you'd have to step outside to change your mind... or so I hear. Alex reads french dance magazines (well, looks at the pictures) and watches ballet on television, longing for her shot at a legitimate dance career. To help illustrate this, the audience is treated to scenes of Alex working out in her skimpy dancer's outfits. Evidently, what they want us to take away from this is that Alex is dedicated to her dream... and that she has a really nice ass; based on the shots that were filmed, mainly the ass thing. There are also scenes with Alex working out and skating with friends. There are also a reasonable number of scenes featuring dancers in Mawby's Bar. But of course, you can't have a movie about dance in the Eighties without the obligatory breakdancing scene. The point of this scene is, apparently, to show that Alex is fascinated by all forms of dance.

Alex's first attempt to audition for a ballet opening, however, has more similarity to The Ugly Duckling... somehow, her dirty work boots don't fit in well with the high-heels and ballet shoes that the other girls are wearing. Classic case of the "ugly-pretty" girl - a "diamond in the rough", if you will.

Alex's problems begin when she has a run-in with Johnny C. (Lee Ving), the owner of a sleazy full-nude club called the Zanzibar, who's been wanting Alex to come work for him. Unfortunately for us, she never does. When he waits for her in Mawby's parking lot, he is scared off by Alex's boss, Nick Hurley (Michael Nouri) from the construction company, who was also waiting for her in the parking lot, but for his own reasons. She falls for her boss/rescuer, finally giving into his advances.

Luckily for you naughty dirty men (and women) out there who like to see women's naked breasts (and you know who we, um, you are), one of Alex's friends and coworkers, Jeanie Szabo (the busty waitress at Mawby's Bar, played by Sunny Johnson) goes to work at the Zanzibar and the scene where Alex goes to rescue her friend from her new career features some topless dancers and a fully nude dancer (well, from behind). It's also a nice touch that the topless dancers have larger breasts than the ballet dancer types. Well, I mean, if you're into that sort of thing.

The main plot of the movie deals with Alex's struggle to convince herself to audition and to convince the audition panel to give her a shot. Alex's boss has a friend on the Art Council and makes a call to get her an audition. This upsets Alex, since she wants to prove herself without help, but as her boss points out, he only got her the audition; she would have to perform well in her audition to earn a part.

The finale of the movie is Alex's audition. It's shaky at first, but she pulls it out in the end, even managing to work in some breakdance. Hokey? Perhaps, but why not... at least it makes the token breakdance scene less gratuitous.

Quite possibly the most erotic scene in Flashdance is Scene 13: "How's the Lobster?", where Alex is at an expensive seafood restaurant with her boss and she plays "footsies" with his crotch and basically simulates fellatio on a piece of lobster. After this scene, I was dying for some lobster.

Flashdance is a nostalgic trip back to the Eighties, as almost every scene dates itself with the wild makeup and clothing. It's more than that, though, it was a veritable icon of the Eighties. Flashdance: Special Collector's Edition provides a lot of featurettes and a special music CD with six songs from the soundtrack: "Flashdance... What a Feeling" (by Irene Cara), "Manhunt" (by Karen Kamon), "He's a Dream" (by Shandi), "Lady, Lady, Lady" (by Joe 'Bean' Esposito), "Romeo" (by Donna Summer) and "Maniac" (by Michael Sembello). If you're a fan of Flashdance and you don't have a copy on DVD, or if you just really want a version with a lot of cool featurettes and the bonus Collector's Edition CD, then I would highly recommend Flashdance Special Collector's Edition. Heck, I'd recommend it even if you've never seen Flashdance, but you like the Eighties. This was, believe it or not, my first time to see this movie. In a modern world where the same media that brings you this review can also easily deliver movies of teens fornicating with produce or naked shots of your next door neighbor, it's nice to see some erotic dance that takes the dance part seriously and leaves something to the imagination.