Xanadu

Xanadu (1980)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Robert Greenwald

Starring: Olivia Newton-John (RIP), Gene Kelly, Michael Beck, James Sloyan, Dimitra Arliss

From: Universal  

RIP Olivia Newton-John

Given the online chatter concerning her unexpected death yesterday-many people reacted to this sad news-I had to see this movie even if it was under sad circumstances. There’s also the sour irony of Xanadu having been released in the United States back in ’80 on… August 8th. A few years ago I viewed and reviewed Grease so instead I went with the movie I saw once, at least 15 years ago. To echo what must have been a shared experience for a plethora of people, I was utterly perplexed by this film. No wonder the Letterboxd ratings are all over the place; it’s more polarizing than typical for a picture. 

After all, it’s about a struggling artist who meets a Muse (yes, as in a Muse from Greek mythology) and with the help of a big band leader turned construction magnet Gene Kelly, create a… roller disco nightclub?! What a bizarre melding of old-timey 40’s musicals-after all, the plot was based on the 1947 movie Down to Earth-and late 70’s fashion/style/music. What doesn’t help is that while ELO is pretty awesome, the music they contribute to the film isn’t always that… the score/soundtrack as a whole is flawed, although not as much so as the movie itself, or especially the charisma vacuum that was the performance of Michael Beck. What a problem that was when he was the lead! No wonder that he didn’t do much after Xanadu, unless you want to brag about his role in Megaforce. 

Yet this still has its charms. After all, I can’t complain about the performances of Newton-John nor the legend Gene Kelly in his final film role. Some of the music I definitely did like and the most inspired bit was the blending of 40’s jazz and the then-modern music of The Tubes. If only they had staged, choreographed and shot the way they did it in the days of Busby Berkeley or when Kelly was a young adult, the actual numbers inside Xanadu notwithstanding. There are some bizarre screen wipes, a random scene that suddenly turns into animation for a few minutes, Old Gene in an amazing scene involving him purchasing new clothing and it involves the likes of pinball, young adults in strange outfits, and more surreal sights, all to an ELO song--ultimately the film is too goofy for me to become too upset about its flaws. I’d like to think I’m not being charitable because one of the stars just passed away, but perhaps I am… 

Then again, there is the detail that I’ve watched many of the other musicals that came out around this time, and not only were they typically as atypical as this-if not more so-but some were undoubtedly worse than this. I should get to reviewing those in the future to explain why those oddities were worse than this.