User Reviews

There is so much wrong with this film. The worst thing about the film? The performance of Michael Beck; you can't get much worse than that! His speaking was so off-based it was downright distracting. And then there was the letdown with the finale -- "Xanadu". It just seemed so anticlimactic.

On the other hand, we had the lovely Olivia Newton-John and wasn't it great seeing the energy and smile of Gene Kelly in one last "new" film; it looked like Kelly was having a ball at the age of 68!

And yet, despite its problems, there's something special about this hokey movie...and it hokey. But every few years I take out the DVD (or now the Blu-Ray) and sit there and take it all in again...and suddenly realize I'm just smiling!

And although the film is less than great, the soundtrack album was a smash, going platinum twice. Olivai Newton-John's vocals are tremendous and the Electric Light Orchestra was (at least in my opinion) never better.

So I don't care that the movie was a flop, or that the film was hokey, or that Olivia (and are) are now pushing 70! It just makes me smile.

Xanadu was more than a flop. As part of a double bill with Can't Stop the Music, it was the inspiration for the Golden Raspberry Awards, which recognize the worst films of the year. Yes, somehow a disco rollerskating remake of Down to Earth - itself the sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan - ended up being a critically reviled mess. Go figure.

The film was originally going to be a relatively low-budget roller disco picture. But as more prominent performers joined the production, it grew larger and larger in scope. Yet rollerskating improbably remained a recurring theme. Also, the strange mix of Jeff Lynne's Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John - along with Cliff Richard and The Tubes - made for an eclectic soundtrack that became a hit independent of the moribund status of the film that inspired it.

But hey - what do you want from a movie that quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," a poem written after a night of opium indulgence?

A large mural of the Nine Muses of Olympus comes to life, with women emerging from it and flying away. In the original script, Sonny Malone (Michael Beck from The Warriors, Megaforce and TV movie giallo lost gem Blackout) painted that mural, which makes sense. In the movie, it's just the start of things as we follow one of those muses to Earth and meet Sonny as he's about to give up on his dream of being an artist.

Sonny's latest job is painting an album cover for a band called The Nine Sisters, which has a beautiful woman in front of an art deco auditorium, who just happens to look like the roller skater who kissed him and ran away. Sonny's obsessed with her and learns that her name is Kira and well, she's Olivia Newton-John and also one of the legendary Muses.

Later, Sonny befriends Daniel "Danny" McGuire (Gene Kelly!) who was once a big band leader but is now a construction mogul. Turns out he had a Muse once who looked just like Kira, who gets the two men to build a gigantic nightclub. For some reason, both of these guys got mad when they learned that the woman they love is some Olympian ideal.

Of course, Kira has gone against the Prime Directive and fallen in love, so shes called back to Xanadu, but Sonny can get there by roller skating as hard as he can through the mural. After debating her father Zeus, he and his wife Mnemosyne agree to allow Kira to return to Earth for a moment or maybe forever - you know, that whole time is different between the afterlife and here kind of conundrum.

Kira and the Muses perform at the new nightclub - also called Xanadu - before flying back to the real Xanadu. Yet a waitress who looks just like Kira stays behind, giving no easy answers.

Xanadu is the second movie of this week of musicals that features Adolfo Quinones, also known as the breakdancer Shabba Doo. You may remember him as Ozone in the two Breakin' movies. And one of the Muses is Sandahl Bergman, who would soon be amazing in movies like Conan the Barbarian and She. This is also strangely the second movie this week that John "Fee" Waybill and Vince Welnick of The Tubes showed up in.

Somehow, director Robert Greenwald emerged to create the celebrated TV movie The Burning Bed before starting a new career in the next century creative left wing documentaries like Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

Xanadu is a movie that could only emerge in 1980. That said, it has some great songs like "Magic" and "Suddenly," but somehow this is a musical that proves that you can make a bad movie from great songs. It's all too much - too much skating, too much gloss, too much schmaltz. Yet there's something to love under all that glitter.

270th film of 2022.

RUNNING COMENTARY

Funky opening Universal spiny world with aircraft going around: airplane, passenger plane, Concorde, spaceship, and then BALL OF MAGI ENERGY LIGHT. And as the opening music plays, its genre changes with the year of that sort of flying aircraft.

Opening musical number. Yay for ELO song. But:

Producer (to director): So. This opening. Are you sure you took enough psychotropic drugs?

Sonny's car looks like it was previously owned by a Muppet bear.

Michael Beck (to his agent): So, what do you have for me? I mean I just had that awesome role in THE WARRIORS.

Agent: I have just the project for you. It has Olivia Newton-John in it. AND Gene Kelly.

Michael: Awesome sauce. Sign me up! Hope it's not a musical...

80's Popcorn Vendor in yellow short-shorts that ride up her bum!

Roller boogie Olivia! I bet she thinks this is a-muse-ing.

Man is Sonny a jerk. And we're supposed to be rooting for him?

From Roller Boogie to Boogie Woogie, Newton-John's got you covered.

Sweet soft shoe number with Kelly and Newton-John. He's still got some of that old magic in his feet.

ZOOT SUITS!!

This musical number - a mish-mash of Swing and Rock music - is actually pretty decent.

So, Sonny and Kira kiss and they call all animated? I'll give the movie this: they certainly have been hitting on every kind of musical film style. I'll also give it this: Fish Sonny is creepy horny.

I watched AN AMERICAN IN PARIS just before watching this. The animated number ended with a red rose. Feels like maybe that was a nod to Kelly's earlier film?

Producer: No, seriously. How many hallucinogenics have you taken?

Aw. Sonny told her he loves her. And she tells him she loves him, too. Good thing they've only known each other for, like, four days? Never fall in love with you muse. Especially when she tells you that she's got 8 sisters and Zeus is her father. And she... PULLS A MOVE STRAIGHT OUT OF HARVEY!! Sonny looks up muse in the dictionary and she added in the bit at the end of the definition, "Now do you believe me, Sonny?

Still not enough evidence, she makes a tv turn on and shows Sonny a black and white film where the characters talk to him (in character) and Kira appears in it. Sonny's disbelief is palpable and now he feels betrayed by it all because she's leaving. Like, why even tell him if you're just going home to Mount Olympus? Or was it back to the painting her and her sisters came out of to begin with?

Now Sonny's whining about Kira being gone so he can't go to the big opening of Xanadu and celebrate it with his business partner, Danny (Gene Kelly). I'm not sure why I should be rooting for Sonny.

Whiny man finds the mural of the muses, and on some wild, much thought about, hunch decides to roller skate as fast as he can down the alley and ram himself into the painting. I did not realize he was part warrior/part Wile E. Coyote.

Now Sonny didn't run into the wall and get a concussion and made it into electric light blackness. Or maybe he did and he's hallucinating. Nah, he made it. He orders Zeus to let Kira go, like a mortal should with the head Greek god. Then we get to hear Zeus and Hera argue in front of the daughter and mortal. Class. Hera tries to convince Zeus is all "No way! I'm almighty Zeus!" and Hera's all, "Really? That's what you're going with?" And Zeus is all, "I'm sleeping on the couch again, aren't I?"

Now it's time for Kira to sing a sad song, wearing a blouse with big puffy upper-arm sleeves. And sings to the camera as well. Nice of her to make eye contact with me. I feel for her. But the song grabs at Zeus' heartstrings so he lets her go back to Earth for "a moment." Or possibly "eternity," because neither Zeus nor Hera seem to be able to tell time.

OPENING OF XANADU WITH A BIG ROLLER-SKATING EXTRAVAGANZA! With all the mish-mash we saw earlier in the film and we get them dancing off calling out Xanadu and we've got ZOOT SUITS AGAIN!! If nothing else, it's worth it to see ZOOT SUITS!.

I'm digging how all the people showing up for the big opening shindig came color coordinated: girls in red, boys in blue.

I'd like to point out that this skating around the rink with all the people clapping hands and stuff in rhythm, slowly building up to them chanting "Xanadu" over and over, took two minutes. All they're doing is skating around in circles. It took another minute to get to the big, big moment, and that is:

THE SINGING OF "XANADU"! WOOT! And we have jacketless Zoot Suit dancers popping!

There are some very weird little dance pieces during this. Two dancers were holding umbrellas that were shaped like the umbrellas you get in drinks.

Omg. At an hour and twenty-eight minutes, they've started a tap routine. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except they look like they're dancing on the floor of Carrousel in LOGAN'S RUN and should be flying into the air at any moment to explode in shots from laser beams. And given this was 1979/1980, there were enough laser beams around that exploding people could've happened.

Newton-John is tapping with them in an outfit that looks like she should be serving milkshakes, now rockin' a song wearing a leopard print outfit with bad rock chick makeup that -

Er. Now it's cowboy themed. She's wearing a "country girl" outfit complete with long frills and a big-ass cowboy hat. This is what they followed up "Xanadu" with?

Back on Carousel!! WHO'S GOING TO EXPLODE?? Why aren't people chanting "Renew!!"??

And now the montage of songs gets back to singing "Xanadu" and wtf is Newton-John wearing? Oops, back to the cute outfit she was wearing when she met Sonny. Sonny doesn't deserve -

OMG!! SHE JUST FLEW UP INTO THE AIR AND EXPLODED!!

Poor Sonny is left standing sad, then walks away from the stage to sit with Gene Kelly, who promptly asks him if he wants a drink. "No, thanks," Sonny replies. But then Kelly asks a server to come give him a drink anyway. Only it turns out to be a Kira look-alike. We know it can't be Kira because we saw Kira explode.

And that's the end of my running commentary because the film's over.

I originally saw this in theaters when it came out, and you know what? It's not as bad as I recall, and not as bad as the perception of it has been over the past 42 years. It's a good film? Mm. Maybe, maybe not. It does have a pretty solid soundtrack, with only one song I thought was schlocky. And it had a very questionable mish-mash of genre songs there at the end. And Sonny wasn't worth Kira's time. Still kind of a jerk there at the end. But that could be because Michael Beck had no idea what he was doing in this film.

I found a quote of his, "The Warriors (1979) opened a lot of doors in film, for me, which Xanadu (1980) then closed." Oof on his career.

I'd also like to point out that although this wasn't his last acting gig, this was Gene Kelly's final feature film. I wonder if it did for the remainder of his career what this film did for Beck.

There's a kitschiness to the film that says "Watch me," so you might as well give it a whirl.

---------- As always, no matter what kind of review this has been, good or bad, props are given to anyone involved with the making of this film. It's not easy to get a film made, so kudos are deserved.

I like ELO, I thought.

I like Gene Kelly, I thought.

Olivia, Newton & John are always a pleasure to look at, I thought.

It's only £2.50 in the discount bin, I thought.

There are lots of enthusiastic comments on the IMDb, I thought.

How can I go wrong? That shows me, I guess.

The producers of this movie clearly thought that Olivia, Newton & John were the reason for the popularity of Grease. Xanadu provides proof that Grease's success rests on Travolta's shoulders.

To be fair, Olivia, Newton & John are saddled with some fair old drivel here, and it required someone considerably less lightweight to actually make something of it (if, indeed, anyone could have). Where frothy comedy is required, Xanadu is a froth-free zone.

The ending is appalling. The entire last third of the film is spent making it clear that the role of a Muse is eternal and there is absolutely no quitting it in order to assume mortality. No exceptions. None. And, after getting special permission to attend the opening of Xanadu, the ascension back to Mount Helicon duly takes place. So who is the roller waitress who turns up in the closing shot? Is it our heroine, belatedly let off Musing (in complete contradiction of everything which has gone before)? Is it a waitress who, just by chance, also looks exactly like Olivia, Newton & John? Or is it Kira (not that I recall any of the Muses being named Kira) who has sneaked out, in which case this can only lead to trouble when Wilfred Hyde White - sorry, Zeus - catches up with her? This makes no sense and is unfair to everything which has gone before.

For a musical, the musical numbers are sparse, drab, and boring. Only Gene Kelly, in a gently unchallenging swansong, comes out of them with credit.

The animated sequence is pretentious and not very good.

ELO's music is not bad, though not among Jeff Lynne's finest.

Michael Beck brings a whole new dimension to the word "miscast."

Olivia, Newton & John conveys rosy-cheeked wholesomeness adequately enough but, when the film as a whole is so comprehensively substandard, it requires a bit more than "adequate" to cut the mustard. The mustard accordingly remains resolutely uncut.