Xanadu

When I saw this movie when I was 8yrs. old, I was wonderstruck. There was definitely a magic to it that held me. Of course, I was already awe-struck with Olivia, seeing her in "Grease". I remember looking up the word "Muse" in the dictionary and highlighting it. Yes, I was 8 and impressionable, but the movie has held a "magic" over me ever since and inspired me to write poetry and even use the word Muse in a license plate. It may be campy to some, but for me it was a good movie. I saw Olivia in Concert at Saratoga in 2001. It was a starry night and when she sang "Magic" and "Xanadu" I had tears in my eyes. It was great to hear her sing those songs perfectly and still look like a Muse.

I was 12 when I saw this movie and loved it. I would dream of being a magically glowing roller skating being from another realm for a couple years after the movie. And that's the point of this comment. There is magic there for the taking if you're looking for some. But if you'd rather sit there with your pencil and steno pad, notating every intellectual criticism you can brainstorm; I'm sure you can come up with a lot.

You get to see Olivia skate and sing with Gene Kelly. There are some great songs by legendary pop band Electric Light Orchestra. There is some great music and a fun parallel universe available any time you want to put your pencil down.

I originally saw "Xanadu" when it was released in 1980. Gene Kelly was in it, so I had to see it. It didn't hurt that Michael Beck was in it as well. Wow - was I disappointed! I love musicals, especially Kelly's, and "Xanadu" really did not appeal to me - at all.

It really isn't a very good movie. It has almost no plot at all and no real antagonist. What little plot there is, I always felt was just lifted from "Down to Earth" (1947) with Rita Hayworth, and "Cover Girl" (1944) with Hayworth, and Gene Kelly (in which he also plays a character named Danny McGuire, which was a nice homage). The soundtrack is great though, and it is nice to see that Kelly can still dance.

Fast forward to 2006. I got a chance to see "Xanadu" again, on a big screen. Specifically, the wonderful Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The print was gorgeous, and the crowd, which filled the theatre almost to capacity, was incredible.

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! The crowd really got into the movie and I just had a blast! What a great experience! The music is still great, and it was a really, really fun movie.

Anyway - "Xanadu" still isn't a "good" movie, but if you can see it under the right circumstances (ie., on a big screen with an audience) it is a great deal of fun.

Confessions time. I first saw this film in the theater in 1980 when my best friend turned 13. It was the highlight of our celebration, as was singing along to the soundtrack when we got home. Believe me, we really got into it!

Let's be honest. Xanadu is no Academy Award winner and it doesn't pretend to be. It's an attempt at a musical that's somewhat successful thanks to Olivia Newton-John and Jeff Lynn's ELO. Listen to most of the songs today and you can definitely still enjoy them. How Gene Kelly got hooked into this is beyond me but he looks like he's having a good time.

The concept is pretty simple. Painter Sonny (Michael Beck) teams up with Gene Kelly to open up Xanadu, a "radical" new club with the best of the old and new. Add into the mix Kyra (OJN), a Greek muse who comes along to make the dream come true. She's gorgeous, can dance, sing and probably make julienne fries. Naturally, Sonny's in love with her and soon, the trouble arises. Kyra, as a muse, can't hang out on earth with mortals forever. She has to go on to her next mission (dreamer).

Okay, so Beck is a somewhat lame hero. But when we were 13, we bought into it. And the angst, love and music were all a teen could want. The one scene we all loved was when the Glenn Miller-era musicians/dancers met up with the oh-so-rad rockers.

Of course, seeing it as a 35-year-old woman, I groan to look at the fashions we were ga-ga for then (esp. the velour tops on the men). The roller boogie aspect is particularly shaming but at the time, it was indeed all the rage. But you know, it brings back some good memories and the songs stand up today pretty well.

Xanadu is a guilty pleasure I indulge in now and then like Ben and Jerry's. And my best friend is still my best friend! We both love Xanadu.

A word of advice to any movie producer: if you have a big-budgeted production that you hope will become a hit, don't hire a director whose only previous experience is on TV. Director Robert Greenwald had directed only TV movie dramas before being assigned to this job, and it shows painfully. The camera either stays still or moves slowly and gracefully, when they should have flung it around and experimented with camera angles to create some oomph for the movie-going audience to feast upon. The only department that really tried here was the art department that created the arty scene-shifts with the accompanying sound effects, and the neon-colored special effects flashing around Kira and the other muses. Don Bluth also provided an animated sequence that offers the only magical moment in the whole film - makes you wish the whole movie had been made in the same style. That would have had so many advantages: the whole superficial story would have been easier to take for instance. Michael Beck would have had a movie career, and we would have been spared from watching "Oh-I'm-so-cute-but-so-poor-at-moving-my-legs-around" Olivia in a second film (or maybe not).

That said, I'm particularly ashamed to admit that I actually like "Xanadu". Very much. The music is the main reason - years before I had seen this film or even heard of it, I had heard "Magic" in the radio, and managed to get a two-minute snippet of it on tape, thinking it was an Abba song I hadn't heard before (no, I'm not an Abba fan - they have a few good songs, but I hate their albums). One day years later, "Xanadu" was on TV in the hotel room I stayed at during a holiday in Sweden - and I happened upon the very scene where "Magic" is heard, where Sonny meets Kira for the first time. Sadly, I couldn't stay to watch the rest, but I immediately wanted to catch the film from beginning to end. Now I have it on tape, and I regularly pop it on my VCR and enjoy the pretty photography, beautiful music, and the irresistibly corny 1980 kitsch "Xanadu" is so chock-full of. A guilty pleasure of the highest magnitude - after all, I'm a nostalgia freak and always will be one.