Reviewer Finds Xanadu Banal, Ridiculous, Offensive
If Xanadu, the supposed blockbuster of a musical offending intelligent audiences everywhere (but specifically at the Academy Theater in Provo), were even a good escape movie, it might have some redeeming value.
As it stands though, if you’re somewhere between the ages of 11 and 17. think disco is the world’s salvation and like Olivia Newton-John no matter what kind of drivel she gets involved in you’ll love “Xanadu. I hated it.
Not only was it offensive, it was downright ridiculous.
Watching Olivia Newton-John in “Xanadu” was like watching an old Doris Day musical and thinking. “Oh, Doris, you’re so beautiful and talented how could you get yourself mixed up in this tripe?”
When the director and writers allowed Olivia to give us everything, the screen illuminated with star presence. When she was forced to repeat lines apparently written by a sixth-grade English class. I started looking for the channel changer.
The music is usually enchanting even haunting and quite appropriate for the fantasy mood the producers sometimes create quite wondrously. There are some unusually beautiful scenes. One in the beginning, for example, when Olivia springs to life to Electric Light Orchestras I’m Alive another when Olivia and Gene Kelly sings a forties duet.
The show’s two biggest disappointments are the romantic lead played by Michael Beck and the show’s banal, offensive and insipid script.
Even Kelly was disappointing but at least he can still dance.
The script is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has seen well done fantasies such as Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, and Star Wars.
I mean what kind of self-respecting writer would communicate to young teenagers that a man’s most poignant and meaningful fantasy in life would center around opening a roller disco that specializes in punk rock and Glenn Miller. Actually, the movie insults both legitimate rock and roll and the late, great band leader of the forties.
Few moments in the script are fully developed. Kelly hints at having known Olivia when he was a great clarinetist of the forties. So, childishly I wait for the big scene where Olivia turns to Kelly and says, “Well, so we meet again after all these years. But no. Nothing, Kelly says he thinks he knows her from somewhere but can’t place the face The fact that the ninny just danced with her in the scene before means nothing.
The writers try and give their ridiculous plot meaning by throwing in various platitudes.
Olivia refuses to answer any questions about where she comes from because she doesn’t want Beck to know she’s a muse a daughter of Zeus.
She looks profoundly at her human lover and says “No questions, no lies”. He prepares regally for his brilliant and stunning reply. “No questions, no truth”. I excused myself, at this point to rid myself of uncontrollable nausea.
At least the Oz, Poppins and Star Wars fantasies have understandable and believable morals. There’s no place like home enjoy your kids while they’re young good will ultimately triumph over evil.
Xanadu preaches that Big Bad Business is out to force every artist to give up his artistic chastity and prostitute his work for the good of the profit margin.
So what does Beck, our artistic hero, do. Not wanting to soil his aesthetic fingers with dirty dollars. he opens a psychedelic, roller disco, with the type of lighting and music my ex-fraternity brothers used to smoke dope to.
Now to the acting. Why and where did they get this Michael Beck? The man cannot act and even if he could, he has about as much charm as Charles Manson playing Andy Hardy.
The show might (I say MIGHT) have been tighter, and lovelier if Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John had had a May-December romance picking up where they left off in the forties. Had the producers done that the fact that Kelly can’t act either could have been more easily overlooked.
I will concede as a frustrated actor that the hardest thing in the world to do is regurgitate ridiculous lines and mean them.
Xanadu is nothing more than a cheap attempt to capitalize on the disco-star wars-make-a-number one record-album-out-of-a stupid-movie market.
It’s a wonder Olivia Newton-John allowed her otherwise enchanting talents to be exploited this way.
By John C. Speer, Herald Entertainment Reviewer