![]() Esskayess from Dallas, TxAnyone else notice the similarity of the percussion and string riffs in this song to those near of the end of 'Mr.Titan from Adelaide, South AustraliaIn the late 60s there was a song called 'The Legend of Xanadu' by a bunch of guys named Dave, Dee, Dozy, Mick & Titch which was a bit of a novelty song which made it all the way to No.1 in the UK, then ONJ and ELO hit No.1 in 1980 with Xanadu, making a success rate of 100% of songs with Xanadu in the title getting to No.1, in the UK art least.And the soundtrack is AWESOME!!! I NEVER get tired of watching Xanadu!!! Sincerely, Lynn Brooks This movie was and still is the best movie that was ever made!!! I got goosebumps the very first time I watched it. Lynn Brooks from Purvis, Ms 39475Xanadu, is a beautiful, magical, love story.Scoobydooby68 from ManchesterJust what are you smoking Lynn ! ?.Nevertheless, it is a guilty pleasure, Olivia sings her sweet little heart out, Gene dances up a storm, ELO rocks out, and it's all now an interesting historical period piece with a modern-day cult following. The whole thing plays like it was built by sugar-hyped six-year-olds who couldn't resist gluing on "one more cool thing," whether it fit or not. Key words from above point: "slapped together." Including one each of every kind of music genre. It was basically just thrown in for the sole purpose of Universal thumbing their nose at Disney. The studio executives made boneheaded decisions slapping this together, like with the animated sequence in the middle which just confused the bejabbers out of everybody. It was the dawn of the '80s Reagan was in office and people wanted either hard sci-fi or down-home country folk, and it was time for heavy metal and greed. It's basically a roller-disco fantasy made at a time when (a) disco, (b) roller-skating, and (c) fantasy all became as dead as fried chicken. And there's no way Xanadu would have outsold The Force, even with dialogue by Shakespeare. They blew $20 million cool ones on the budget for this in 1980! Consider that Star Wars, released just three years previously, had a budget of $11 million. The concept, story, and overall dialog is pathetic, even though everything else is great. It's a great idea, but the way this movie handles it, it's an incomprehensible traffic jam with dozens of superfluous performers milling about.For those of you who have heard of this film's reputation but not yet seen it, you might be asking yourself, "What on earth is so terrible about it?" It's famous for being a box-office flop, but what, did it stink all over? And you might even go hunting down reviews online, only to find a queue of user reviews on IMDB defending it for dear life and crying that it's not that bad. Then the two bandstands are moved together so they blend and everyone is on one bandstand, singing one song. The movie gives us one of each: Andrews Sisters clones in close harmony, and the Electric Light Orchestra in full explosion. The dance numbers in this movie do not seem to have been conceived for film.įor example: When Beck and Kelly visit the empty amphitheater, Kelly envisions a '40s band in one corner and an '80s rock group in another. Even worse, I'm afraid, is the choreography by Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent, especially as it's viewed by Victor Kemper's camera. The movie is muddy, it's underlit, characters are constantly disappearing into shadows, and there's no zest to the movie's look. Well, Hollywood musicals have been made with thinner plot lines than this one, but rarely with less style. And that is the whole weight of the movie's ideas, except for a scene where Michael Beck visits Olivia in heaven, which looks like a computer-generated disco light show. They team up to convert a rundown old wrestling amphitheater into Xanadu, a nightclub that will combine the music of the 1940s and 1980s. That means both men are in love with the same dream girl, who, we discover, is not of this earth. In a quietly charming fantasy scene, he sings a duet with his old flame, the girl singer in the old Miller band-and, lo and behold, it's Olivia Newton-John. Kelly used to be a sideman in the Glenn Miller Orchestra (and also in the Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey bands, having apparently missed the Miller band's fatal last flight). ![]() That's ok, because he's met this nice older guy (Gene Kelly) who's very rich and wants to open a nightclub like the one he had back in New York in the 1940s. Beck works as a commercial artist, designing record album covers, and when he tries to include Olivia in one of his paintings he gets into trouble at work. It gives us a young man ( Michael Beck) who falls in love with the dazzling fantasy figure (Newton-John) who keeps popping up in his life. And yet it begins with an inspiration that I found appealing.
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