Xanadu is a dream that flops
A muse named Kira (Olivia Newton-John) looks on while struggling artist Sonny (Michael Beck) paints her portrait in a scene from the movie "Xanadu." He falls in love with her, and though it's not supposed to happen to a muse, she falls in love with him too.
Producer Lawrence Gordon and director Robert Greenwald recycle that age-old Hollywood concept of “Making Dreams Come True,” just one more time with their film “Xanadu.”
Olivia Newton-John is cast as Kira the muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus who is sent to earth to inspire a young artist, Sonny. Michael Beck as Sonny is pretty to look at, and that’s just about it. However, Beck does the best he can within a limited role. His character is colorless, he neither sings nor dances in this musical, he mostly hangs around and gapes at the beautiful Kira. Indeed he spends the better part of the first half of the film chasing Newton-John around on roller skates.
Yes, every ’80s gimmick is used in this film, from space-age special effects (that border on the tacky side) to the roller skating and disco craze, in order to emphasize the film’s contemporary flavor. But “Xanadu” is not merely a modernization of the Hollywood musical.
It attempts to dredge up nostalgia for the “Good Old Days” in its casting of Gene Kelly as Danny, an aging musician who once fronted a Big Band in the ’40s. He owned his own club in those days, but he threw it all away in grief for a lost love. He spends most of his time now sitting on the beach blowing tunes on his clarinet.
He meets Sonny on the beach one day, and they become friends. Danny’s dream is to one day open up another club, Sonny dreams of being able to quit his dreary, compromising job copying album covers for advertisements to freelance on his own. They become friends and quickly decide to join forces to make “Xanadu” the Club, a reality. This is where Newton-John comes in. She is sent by Zeus to help make “Xanadu,” happen at which time she is supposed to return to her father, only, as you might imagine, she falls in love with Sonny… need I go on?
And there is Xanadu’s major problem: Newton-John. She can neither act nor dance, and that quivering, breathy singing voice that catapulted her to the top of the charts just doesn’t transpose to the big screen. Her big dance number with Kelly is stilted and uneasy looking, in fact the choreography in general is dull, seemingly held back by John’s limited abilities.
Terrific dancing was an important ingredient in those old films and it just isn’t present in “Xanadu.” Even the bit of hoofing that Kelly does in this film seems to be merely token, but apparently he had to be coaxed into doing any dancing at all, having hung up his dancing shoes at this stage of the game.
Poor Kelly looks so out of place in this film! Though he still has that winning smile and easy charm, he looks anachronistic at best among the supersonic settings of “Xanadu.”
’40s romantisism just doesn’t translate effectively into an ’80s milieu of space age special effects, blatant sexuality, and quickie gimmicks.
For all of its allusions to “Love” and “Magic,” Xanadu comes off sterile and plastic.
The bloodless score, performed by, Electric Light Orchestra (which ran out of creative ideas five years ago, and have been churning out formulas ever since), The Tubes, and Newton-John don’t help either. An update of the ’40s musical is an interesting concept in theory, but “Xanadu”’s attempt at melding the with the new just doesn’t cut it.
By Mary Jo Santilli, Daily Collegian Staff Writer
More from the Xanadu movie.