Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (And Other 80s Dance Movies)

Dance Dance Revolu– wait, nevermind, that didn’t exist yet.

One time, in a state of delirium, I thought it would be a great idea to watch dance movies from the 80s. Apparently, dancing was all the rage in the 80s. There were exactly 15,335 dance movies made between the years 1980-1989. So in my state of delirium I watched Flashdance (incomprehensible), Footloose (“When I get angry I just have to dance!”), and Dirty Dancing (The Swayze). All of these movies are terrible. Even though I was delirious I could still tell they were terrible. They are so bad they are likely to replace waterboarding as the next form of government-sanctioned torture interrogation.

This movie is all wet.

A lot of times movies will be derided for having “no plot.” Usually this is a slight exaggeration because even movies with “no plot” somehow get from Point A to Point B. Very little may happen, but most times there is at least some minuscule semblance of a storyline. Flashdance, however, truly has no plot. Absolutely nothing of consequence happens in this movie. It’s provisionally “about” a young, beautiful female steel welder (I can’t tell you how many hot lady steel welders I’ve met in my life) who aspires to be a ballet dancer. The best way she knows to achieve this goal is to go to a dive bar at night and “flash dance.” Flash dancing is kind of like stripping/spazzing-out on-stage, but not actually getting naked. The audience seems to really get into it. Apparently, having attacks of epilepsy on-stage is super erotic. At one point, she pulls a cord and water drops all over her body. Eventually, she auditions for a ballet school, but runs away, realizing she has no talent. That’s right. That bitch has no talent as a dancer at all. Watching her thrash around on-stage for 50 minutes of the 95 minute runtime was excruciating. It’s like this movie is just a bunch of music videos strung together with the most paper-thin character imaginable. They should have just made a movie out of a bunch of music videos. That would have at least made sense. In the end we don’t learn if she gets into the ballet school or not. It’s not important. It doesn’t matter because there is no plot. This movie is an abortion of storytelling coherence.