Xanadu (1980)

Typically when I do these movie posts, I open with a bunch of credits: actors, directors, writers, composers, etc. But this is one of those cases where I don't find it necessary. 

The framework of "Xanadu," essentially is Gene Kelly (in his last movie), Olivia Newton-John, and Michael Beck (in probably his best known movie- for better or worse) featuring music written by E.L.O. (Electric Lights Orchestra).

The first time I heard anything about this movie was when we vacationed in New Orleans in summer 1999. We were shopping in a record store and my dad found the soundtrack. I think he said that he'd been looking for it a long time and finally found it. (I found the soundtrack for the Lion King sequel there as well... sure, its songs weren't as memorable as the Elton John work from the original, but dang, I loved that movie)...
So we'd listened to the soundrack a bunch of times before I'd even seen the movie. One of those listens, I distinctly remember was when we were driving to my uncle's funeral. "Don't Walk Away" is already a sad song in its own right, but the circumstances made it a little more emotional.
Years later, we finally found the movie at FYE... and I figured since it's turning 40 this year, it was worth a revisit. 

I didn't find out until much later that "Xanadu" was quite infamous as being one of the "worst" movies ever made... so bad that it got the distinction of the Golden Raspberry... The Razzie Awards pick the worst of the worst in movies every year. Prince even got a few himself- for the song "Sex Shooter" and his directing in "Under the Cherry Moon"... and of course the "Twilight" and "Fifty Shades" franchises have gotten hammered by them as well... 
I'll call movies however I like, but I sometimes feel like critics are too harsh on certain movies. This isn't to say any of these examples are perfect, but how harsh can you be to give a movie a special award for being really bad? 

A few years back, Internet personality Nostalgia Chick did a review on this. Looking at the opening credits, showing various aircraft flying around the Earth as the opening credits roll, she's like "Gene Kelly, Olivia Newton-John, E.L.O.... and a spaceship, oh, so it's about aliens?!"... it's not about aliens. One scene she nit-picked about in terms of "bad filmmaking" was "Suddenly" where Sonny and Kira are skating around a studio full of props-- and they skate around a scene of palm trees three or four times and the camera angle doesn't change once.

I imagined that if people had an issue with anything, it was the whole Muse storyline, especially when Sonny finds out Kira is a muse and tries to get her back and Zeus and Hera kept forgetting the difference between measures in time- a moment or forever- and when she says how they learned about "feelings" in some class they took in school... 
yeah, some of that dialogue is a bit cheesy and ridiculous, but I loved the whole concept about the muses inspiring people and the possibility of one falling in love with the person she's inspiring. 

The movie runs about 96 minutes... and the majority of that is musical numbers. The soundtrack has 10 songs and each of them got at least 5 minutes of screentime. Admittedly, there were a couple they could have done without because they didn't add a lot to the plot. Sonny and Kira spend so much time together throughout the movie and a bunch of them involve songs. "Suddenly" and "Don't Walk Away"-- the latter is a really beautifully drawn Don Bluth animated sequence, but it really comes out of nowhere and makes no sense (Nostalgia Chick might have labeled it a "big-lipped alligator moment"-- which is a running joke for a movie scene that's thrown in randomly, adds nothing to the plot, and is never mentioned again).
"All over the world" is used for a makeover/costume/dress-up montage. It's meant to be fun, but it verges on bizarre in a couple of spots- particularly when a bunch of extras are wearing spiderweb fishnets and there's a dude who thinks he's Spider-Man (seriously, what's with that guy?)

How the other songs were incorporated into the movie... "Magic" was the big hit on the 1980 Billboard charts, but it only really serves as background music for when Sonny and Kira have their first conversation. 
"I'm Alive" is the first production and it starts the movie with a BANG-- all the muses come alive from a mural in Venice Beach. They're also multi-racial, something that so many people want to see in movies nowadays, but wasn't nearly as appreciated back then because this movie was considered a commercial disaster. But yeah, what a scene that is-- it still gets me to this day. 
"Whenever You're Away" is a really cool dance duet between Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly-- trivia says that he choreographed it himself and his condition was a closed studio and only having a handful of people on set. Very classy. 
There's also this killer duet between a 40's big band and 80's rock band. And guess what-- the two songs fit together perfectly by the end. Seeing them come together in the movie- that's a really cool moment. I remember first hearing the song and preferring the 40's version because the 80's version was more like heavy metal and I'm not a fan of the genre. But then the song started to get going and the intensity of it mellowed a little bit. 

The craziest part of the movie overall was that it came out in 1980... the decade had barely started, yet it featured a lot of fashion and musical trends that would go on to define it. Like it or not, it influenced what the decade would become known for. 

Xanadu doesn't get referenced very often, but it's kinda funny whenever it surfaces... 
in Goldmember, the last Austin Powers movie, they're at the club and they're doing a roller skating scene that's reminsicent from the end of that movie.
And in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," RDJ and Val Kilmer are watching a VHS tape and they're looking through the cast list to see who's in it. RDJ asks "Who's Michael Beck" and Val Kilmer is like "oh he was in Xanadu with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John"...

in the trivia, it said that while the movie was panned, it's gained cult status and is popular among gays... Val Kilmer's character in that movie was gay, so I can't say that's too surprising he knew that. 

With pretty much every song, I remembered where they fit in the movie... but I completely forget about "Suspended in Time"... maybe because it's not an E.L.O. number. It's ONJ's "Hopelessly Devoted" moment in the movie. 
Geesh... so much good music, but my eyes welled up a bunch of times... nostalgia, but also there's some emotional moments in this thing. It may not be perfect, but it's still sad to see it end, but it's also nice that's a happy ending. 
Bleck- I can be such a sap sometimes... no matter how old I get, that's something that's never gonna change whether I like it or not.