I believe it is very important make it clear proper from the beginning that Xanadu isn’t an excellent film. The explanation for being so unambiguous about that proper firstly is that I’ve grave doubts will probably be clear from most of what I write over the subsequent a number of hundred phrases that I really imagine that to be true, so simply as soon as extra, for the parents in again: Xanadu isn’t an excellent film. In actual fact, it’s dangerous.

I find it irresistible anyhow, which is my drawback, not the film’s. There are not any motion pictures that I really like the place I really feel extra conflicted about it: the factor is, it isn’t ironic love. Plenty of dangerous motion pictures are straightforward to like due to how staggering and wrong-headed their selections are, love them in a sniggering, superior method: with out leaving the world of disco musicals launched in 1980, there’s Menahem Golan & Yoram Globus’s monumentally brainfucked dystopian satire The Apple and the dopey Village Folks biopic Cannot Cease the Music. The alternatives that Xanadu director Robert Greenwald and screenwriters Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel are unquestionably wrongheaded, and a terrific lots of them are staggering, and it is arduous to not really feel no less than some superiority over the factor. However in comparison with the demented, “house aliens attempting to know humanity” cynicism of The Apple and the virtually duststorm of cocaine floating round Cannot Cease the Music, Xanadu has an nearly alarming quantity of honest confidence that it’s actually good and particular and significant. It isn’t information that sincerity is the particular ingredient that separates the really elect within the So Unhealthy It is Good pantheon, besides there is a fairly vast gulf between mere “sincerity” and Xanadu‘s open perception in itself because the inheritor to the nice film musicals of the Forties and ’50s, an actual piece of Outdated Hollywood craftsmanship and pizzazz muscling its method again to the theaters of 1980 the place will probably be greeted with cheers of adulation from the moviegoing devoted. It isn’t only a bunch of individuals attempting and failing to make an excellent film, it is folks attempting and failing to make one thing that would stand head-and-shoulders with Singin’ within the Rain – however believing that they’re succeeding. Or, anyhow, placing within the effort as if they believed they have been succeeding – studying reminiscences concerning the manufacturing of Xanadu, you do get the sense that a lot of the ideas knew in some unspecified time in the future earlier than its monetary failure in theaters that issues hadn’t turned out the best way everyone had hoped. However that is the factor: they’d the hope. And even very late in manufacturing, they have been nonetheless treating this like an enormous splendid musical that everyone was going to like: the final sequence to be filmed was a musical quantity referred to as “Every time You are Away from Me”, a singing and dancing duet between the 2 top-billed stars, Olivia Newton-John (her quick follow-up, as a display actor, to the generation-defining megahit Grease; she successfully gave up her performing profession on the bottom of this movie’s failure) and Gene Kelly (whose four-decade profession as a film star ends right here, with solely a smattering of TV appearances and documentary appearances left, although that is most likely much less to do with the movie’s failure and extra to do with him being nearly 68 years previous when it got here out), and God bless ’em, they’re giving it their all. Certainly, it is one of many solely locations within the film the place I’m pretty assured that Newton-John wasn’t excessive on one thing whereas taking pictures – she loses the generically nice, glassy look she has in almost all of her scenes, and appears actively excited to be maintaining with Kelly’s comparatively easy faucet strikes, although what Kelly can do together with his legs even on the age of 67 and with choreography designed to accommodate him remains to be fairly pleasant and good.

Actually, the “Every time You are Away from Me” quantity is a reasonably good place to start out digging into Xanadu, as a result of it typifies a lot of the issues the film has occurring that are not associated to neon lighting. To wit: it is achingly determined to make you consider classical Hollywood musicals in the best way that solely one thing which performs the “and likewise starring the revived corpse of Gene Kelly!” card could be determined; it’s meaningfully well-executed by people who find themselves proficient within the particular methods they must be, and never speaking right down to the fabric; the music (on this specific case, by Newton-John’s common author and producer John Farrar, who wrote most of her massive numbers – Jeff Lynne of ELO wrote the remaining) has a distinctly low-rent synth-ey cheese to it that’s form of charmingly dated but in addition fairly droning and drab; the narrative and stylistic idea of the factor is cheesy and bonkers (on this case, utilizing a bunch of dissolves to make Kelly’s character think about himself in a threadbare USO present within the ’40s with Newton-John because the singer who performed with the band he led in these days). That is just about the film in a nutshell: folks attempting to use the craft of an enormous musical manufacturing by the Freed Unit at MGM to a gaudy, nutsoid “all of the medication because the ’70s was the ’80s went into the making of this movie” spectacle of inordinately dangerous style. “Every time You are Away from Me” is not even in significantly dangerous style, for that matter: the dissolves are extreme, and the ghostly high quality of the USO manufacturing, which seems to be in a featureless black void with out an viewers or no less than half of the devices that we are able to hear, doesn’t mirror effectively on this massive finances movie’s massive finances, however you possibly can nearly fake that the hole high quality of the manufacturing is deliberate, tying in with the theme of loss and reminiscence that the movie does type of possess. It is by no means attempting to foreground this, as a result of it is melancholy and morbid, and the movie desires to be a rocking good time on the discotheque, however the story is mainly “an immortal muse causes her new boyfriend to assist realise the dream that her geriatric previous boyfriend deserted 50-some years in the past”.

However I’ve gotten off monitor. I used to be saying, the principle temper of Xanadu is a weird and unreasonable – however, crucially, by no means boring! – try to mix some uniquely cheesy ’80s-isms with the “let’s placed on a present!” vigor of a traditional musical, and in some way this comes eerily shut to truly working. The large factor that the film has in its nook is Kelly, who’s at no level anyplace in these 96 minutes responsible of the factor that quite a bit Outdated Hollywood Royalty have been after they confirmed up in motion pictures like this round this time: he is by no means jut lazily taking the paycheck for not being useless but and making use of his not-deadness to offer a veneer of respectability to one thing unworthy of it. For instance: fellow MGM contractee and dancing legend Fred Astaire, who put precisely zero effort into his efficiency as “charming liar in a tux” in 1974’s The Towering Inferno. Kelly desires this to work as a musical. He is taking part in together with all the extraordinarily silly shit they’re having him do, together with the indignity of by far probably the most tasteless musical quantity, “All Across the World”, which sends Kelly off to do a bunch of costume adjustments at a hideously stylish clothes retailer whereas extras dressed like a Mad Max 2 biker gang flail about in probably the most half-baked of all of the movie’s usually foolish choreography. And by God if Kelly does not grin his unassailable film star grin, and pull faces when he must in service to the horrible gags, and clown about in shitty-looking garments doing extraordinarily silly dance steps. In method that you’d by no means ever say of the late work of almost anyone else in his generational cohort, I believe that Xanadu is, in a significant sense “a Gene Kelly car”, and that’s each a fantastic factor and a horrible factor in no matter combination you want. I discover one thing superb about it: there he’s, issues are burning down round him, the ship has nearly totally disappeared beneath the floor of the water, however damned if he is nonetheless not on what little piece of deck stays dry, hoofing and hamming his coronary heart out.

That is truthfully quite a bit, even when it is form of all that Xanadu has, film star-wise. Newton-John, I’ve stated, spends loads of the film trying fairly glazed over, and the precise lead (although he’s third-billed), Michael Beck, is actually simply struggling. The movie killed off his profession with nice swiftness, just one film after The Warriors was sufficient of a hit to place him on casting brokers’ radar; there isn’t any extra seen sufferer of this movie’s field workplace failure, most certainly as a result of no person else had so little safety. Newton-John was an enormous music star dabbling within the motion pictures, and the movie’s soundtrack bought extraordinarily effectively, so she had nothing to be embarrassed by; producer Lawrence Gordon merely shifted again to motion motion pictures, Greenwald was by no means greater than a jobbing director earlier than he shifted into making political documentaries a few years later. Beck was mainly no person, and never almost scorching sufficient off the again of 1 cult hit to outlive this type of mortification, particularly since nothing about Xanadu actually means that he has “it”: the film has handed him a troublesome half, with nonstop conceitedness and sneering meant to come back off as “creative integrity” and “threadbare charisma” and “romantic poverty”, and Beck’s angular options resolve too effectively into sharp, offended stares for him to do something however lean into probably the most unlikable facets of Sonny, the irritable painter turned discotheque impresario and mortal lover of the muse Terpischore, however who largely simply appears like he most likely will all the time begin yelling at you even when he is acquired nothing to be mad about.

However this isn’t a film the place dangerous performing can actually hurt it: the story is such a bizarre, crazy fantasy that the folks in it resembling people would truthfully be extra of a distraction than a assist. Principally, Terpischore, hiding behind the title Kira, warps to earth together with her eight sisters, who at this second of their growth are actually into curler skating, and tries to persuade failed painter Sonny to maintain following his desires, and that is like it so far as precise narrative goes. So to flesh this out, the writers mainly simply string collectively a bunch of bizarre fantasy sequences, some flashbacks, some desires, generally simply Sonny making an attempt to see Kira in a darkish, gloomy warehouse, barely lit apart from some swimming pools of sunshine, so he cannot fairly see that she’s dissolving out and in of our dimension as she skates round in figure-eights, and the music “Magic” performs (by a considerable margin the most important hit to come back off the soundtrack, and that’s an acceptable reflection of the way it’s the very best music on the soundtrack). Every of those fantasies inevitably turns into a musical quantity, so a very extraordinary proportion of these 96 minutes entails singing and dancing, which if nothing else helps preserve the pacing brilliant. Nearly the one “straight” scenes we get discover Sonny bitching together with his co-workers on the cabin the place they make large-format variations of album covers, and these are excessively bland and have probably the most concentrated dangerous performing within the movie.

Largely, although, Xanadu simply retains throwing gonzo shit at us. Typically it is pleasant, generally it is mortifying, and 100% of the time it is gaudy. At one level, it turns into an animated sequence made below the course of Don Bluth, as his first massive industrial work after leaving Disney; it entails Kira and Sonny remodeling into fish and birds, and there’s something really demented in how Hen-Kira is sporting legwarmers, whereas Fish-Kira is the primary of Bluth’s horny nonhuman animals with some actual va-va-voom curves”, which is all of the extra mind-melting as a result of Newton-John herself has no such factor. Additionally, the cartoon Michael Beck appears to be like terrible and Bluth is clearly thrilled when he can flip him right into a sexy fool cartoon chicken with googly eyes. However Xanadu can be the form of film that has so rattling a lot insane shit occurring that, nearly with out exception, after I watch it and I get to that time, my response is “proper, there is a Don Bluth musical quantity on this”, which appears like one thing it’s best to completely not have the ability to fully neglect a few film. Additionally the scene the place we go to the house of the Olympic gods, an enormous grid of orange neon tubes, the place the unseen voices of Zeus (Wilfred Hyde-White) and Mnemosyne (Coral Browne), or possibly it is Hera, however the movie clearly does not have a refined sense of Historical Greek theology, act like a dotty previous couple in a British sitcom.

The principle play the movie makes is to dump a ton of individuals in entrance of a cheap-looking set, sporting costumes which are both “tasteless ’80s junk that is cute in its method” or “tasteless ’40s throwbacks performed in an ’80s fashion that really feel like a horrible nightmare from which you’ll be able to’t get up”, and march them via some very energetic and often fairly well-handled group choreography. The large exception is the climactic “Xanadu” quantity, the one time Newton-John sings a Lynne composition, so you understand what an enormous mixture of all of the movie’s numerous stylistic tendrils that is: right here it no less than appears to be like like they spent cash on the set, and likewise the dancers appear extraordinarily confused by the choreography. Like, no less than it’s best to attempt to put the dancers with massive confused appears to be like and really critical “counting the steps” frowns on their faces someplace apart from proper within the entrance, two folks down from Kelly. At any charge, “Xanadu” is a wonderfully chaotic finale for a film that retains feeling like a hummingbird because it zips from place to put: it cuts madly from teams of skating folks to different teams of skating folks, and because it explodes into insanity, it begins tossing in random folks we’ve not seen in any respect, only for the hell of it, like a lady suspended by her neck and spinning positioned very conspicuously on the left edge of 1 body. Then it dissolves into three nearly fully unrelated Newton-John numbers the place she will get to do her personal costume adjustments, all whereas the music sounds so doggedly, shittily artificial (that is the plain nadir of the ELO half of the soundtrack).

There is no such thing as a filter on any of this, and that is an enormous a part of what makes Xanadu so giddy and vigorous. No matter thought the filmmakers might provide you with, they have been going to deal with is as the very best thought they might have had and decide to it with no whisper of doubt. The movie is endlessly colourful, fast-moving, totally of hideous neon-colored compositing results that encompass Newton-John like a Star Trek power subject, unrelentingly cheery in its massive group actions. Whether it is jaw-droppingly tasteless – and oh, it is – that is solely as a result of it loves every part it is doing with such fervor {that a} idea like “style” does not actually apply. It is without doubt one of the dumbest motion pictures of the Eighties, and one of the joyful motion pictures of the Eighties, and I actually cannot let you know which a type of two issues you ought to suppose issues extra, however I’ve way back made my peace with which one I suppose issues extra.

Tim Brayton is the editor-in-chief and first critic at Alternate Ending. He has been recognized to point out up on Letterboxd, writing about much more motion pictures than he does right here.