• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Dec 13, 2024 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

Aerobics mega-enthusiast Samantha Blair (Cynthia Dale) seems to be on a rocketship to calisthenics superstardom. Her gym, Heavenly Bodies, is a rousing success, attracting clientele from all over the city, and she’s a frontrunner to land a gig hosting a morning exercise show on the local network affiliate. Her life isn’t all peachy-keen, though: her pro football player boyfriend is a chauvinist lunk, and of course a few scrappy young women can’t just run their dance studio in peace without a creepy celebrity fitness guru and his greedy business partner trying to shut them down. What else can a single mom and exercise entrepenuer to do in this situation, but publicly challenge her rival to a high-stakes, day-long aerobics marathon?

A time capsule of mid-’80s pop music, fashion, and the dancer-cise fitness movement, Heavenly Bodies (1985) is a flagrant and unashamed knock-off of Flashdance which hit theaters two years too late to grab onto its coattails. (Bodies acknowledges its inspiration with a wink by having Samantha hand out flyers for her club while standing in front of a Flashdance poster.) Shot in Canada over just a few weeks with a budget under $1 million, Heavenly Bodies lacks the glitz of Adrian Lyne’s Irene Cara-fueled blockbuster but makes up for it with authenticity. Unlike Jennifer Beals, Cynthia Dale was an experienced dancer, and thanks to the production’s hurried pace and the paper-thin plot in the script, much of Heavenly Bodies’ runtime is dedicated to letting her do just that. And she’s good—there are a handful of very memorable dance sequences, including a far-fetched number where Samantha goes wild on an empty TV soundstage, even back-flipping off a ladder, that feels like something out of a Fred Astaire film. (Fred Astaire, well, with a splash of Solid Gold choreography.) Heavenly Bodies is a strong showcase for this particular era and style of dance; in that way it’s probably a closer relative to Breakin’ (1984), in how the producers found stars who were dancers first, and wisely trained the cameras on them doing what they do better than anyone else.

Nearly everything else about Heavenly Bodies is absurd, but assured to put smiles on viewers’ faces: the outfits, the hairstyles, the music, and in particular some of that dialogue. Case in point, a tender scene where Samantha tries to gently explain the concept of an orgy to her elementary school-aged son—just how and why was this allowed to happen? (We’re glad it did.) Heavenly Bodies is no exquisitely-composed masterpiece, but any movie that can get its audience full-tilt emotionally invested in a competitive aerobics marathon does a lot of things right.

On the disc you’ll find a new, on-camera interview with star Cynthia Dale, who reminisces about Bodies’ chaotic, five-week shoot with fondness and good humor. There’s also an audio commentary by Jeffrey Mixed and Millie De Chirico, with the former talking about how the movie found a new generation of fans with the movie’s unusually frequent screenings at the New Beverly Cinema, which led to the latter programming it in late-night slots on TCM. (Like the interview, this is fairly light in tone—the commentators are as giddy about everything happening on screen as anyone would be while watching the film.) These are fun bonus materials all around.

Finally, Fun City is among the boutique labels who have been taking special care to produce inserts actually worth taking out of the Blu-ray cases, so the idea that Heavenly Bodies would come with a booklet containing context-boosting essays isn’t exactly new. It is absolutely worth highlighting this time around, though, as the pamphlet for Heavenly Bodies is especially delightful. It’s formatted like one of those old magazines you used to get each month with a premium movie channel subscription, hashing out the programming schedule and teasing upcoming premieres. Most of it comprises an essay by Nathan Holmes which explores the film within the scope of the Canadian film industry; an additional essay by Margaret Barton-Fumo dissects the movie pop-tastic soundtrack. These are flanked by mock broadcast schedules and little movie previews (which double as sly ads for other FCE releases.) It’s the most fun booklet we’ve found packed with a Blu-ray in a long time, and absolutely worth seeking out a first pressing of the release so that you can get your hands on it.

(www.funcityeditions.com/shop/p/heavenlybodiesstandardblu-kpffn)