Flashdance
Reception

Flashdance (1983)

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External reception

6.3
5 platform(s) · 7 ratings 69,570 votes
7.6/10 2,941 votes Synced 2026-07-20
6.2/10 64,919 votes Synced 2026-08-20
Audience 6.7/10 56 votes Synced 2026-07-19
Critics 3.9/10 Synced 2026-07-19
Audience 6.0/10 Synced 2026-07-17
Critics 3.7/10 Synced 2026-07-17
6.5/10 1,654 votes Synced 2026-09-12

External reviews

Staff (Not Credited) · Variety 40.00/100.00

Watching Flashdance is pretty much like looking at MTV for 96 minutes. 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.

synced 2026-07-19
Staff (Not Credited) · Christian Science Monitor 38.00/100.00

Punchy, cleverly stylized, but utterly empty yarn about a feisty young woman who welds by day, disco-dances by night, and dreams of the day when she can devote her life to her art.

synced 2026-07-19
Janet Maslin · The New York Times 40.00/100.00

With a score by Giorgio Moroder, and with ingenious costumes that are utterly au courant, Flashdance contains such dynamic dance scenes that it's a pity there's a story here to bog them down.

synced 2026-07-19
Roger Ebert · Chicago Sun-Times 38.00/100.00

If Flashdance had spent just a little more effort getting to know the heroine of its story, and a little less time trying to rip off "Saturday Night Fever," it might have been a much better film.

synced 2026-07-19
Staff (Not Credited) · Time Out London 30.00/100.00

There's absolutely nothing to it, beyond Ms Beals cavorting in a leotard, lots of sheeny backgrounds courtesy of Lyne the former adman, and a Joe Eszterhas screenplay mixed through with cliché concentrate as female blue-collar worker proceeds from showgirl at a men's club to the big audition for the Pittsburgh ballet school. The star, it has to be said, is not at her most convincing as a welder (how does she afford an apartment the size of an aircraft hangar?), nor should we forget that most of the serious terpsichorean gymnastics were done by uncredited French dancer Marine Jahan.

synced 2026-07-19
Jonathan Rosenbaum · Chicago Reader 40.00/100.00

Glitz with no mind and lots of fancy visuals, edited with a pounding beat.

synced 2026-07-19
Richard Corliss · Time 30.00/100.00

Like Saturday Night Fever and, for that matter, the Rocky films, Flashdance has made it big by taking experiences of black youths and playing them in whiteface. But unlike its grittily romantic predecessors, Flashdance is pure glitz.

synced 2026-07-19

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