Review of Xanadu (1980) by Andreas O — 24 Oct 2010

I had mixed impressions of "Xanadu" before seeing it, knowing that it was one of the two films that inspired the creation of the Razzie Awards (along with "Can't Stop the Music") and that it also had a cult sizable enough to warrant its transformation into a Broadway musical over 25 years after its ignominious debut. Given that the Razzies love easy targets and despise earnest, if supremely flawed, attempts at storytelling, I was expecting some fun camp translating into at least mild amusement.

Well, "Xanadu" certainly is earnest. It is also boring as the day is long, lazily connecting its very few musical numbers with an uninspired love story and horrendous attempts at comedy. There are some nice daffy, inexplicable flourishes - screen transitions that mimic PowerPoint animations, a brief Don Bluth-animated musical sequence, Gene Kelly dancing inside a giant pinball machine - but the film sadly plods along with charisma-impaired star Michael Beck's heroic quest to quit his job painting enlarged reproductions of album covers (What?) and fulfill his dream of opening a combination roller disco-big band showcase (Huh?) with a wealthy octogenarian stranger he met a week before (The fuck?).

Aiding Beck is the Muse of Terrible Ideas, Olivia Newton-John, a screen presence as sedate and lifeless as the mural she pops out of in the opening number. She's got a great voice, though, and is pleasant while engaging Kelly in some light hoofing. Too bad that they're often starved for good tunes - only a third of the soundtrack possesses any snap, with the ELO songs that bookend the film standing out as the best from an audio-visual standpoint. In a movie that boasts its connection to the lavish Hollywood musicals of yesteryear, why the hell are there only FOUR flesh-and-blood, singing-and-dancing musical numbers? (Five if you count Newton-John's snoozer of a love ballad staged with all the fantastical ambiance of lazer bowl night in Inglewood).

"Xanadu" is goofy and it is odd and it has wonderful train-wreck qualities that make it a perverse joy to examine, like a Rosetta Stone for modern ill-conceived would-be blockbusters. Ultimately, though, "Xanadu" is just a bad, bad film, as lifeless and phony as the gleeful grin on Kelly's face as he rollerskates through a crowd of breakdancers and Studio 54 rejects. Let us not speak of it again.