When pop sensation Olivia Newton-John died last week at age 73, lots of people probably went and (re)watched Grease, the 1978 musical smash hit in which she starred alongside John Travolta — that is, they indulged their nostalgia for a prior era’s nostalgia (already, by the 1970s, Baby Boomers were feeling nostalgic about their youth in the 1950s). I, instead, decided to watch Xanadu.
There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Xanadu. I’m aware of it only because I’m a fan of Electric Light Orchestra, and ELO collaborated with Newton-John on the movie’s soundtrack. Released in 1980, Xanadu stars Newton-John as Kira, a mysterious beauty who entrances frustrated artist Sonny Malone (Michael Beck). Xanadu — the movie — is so legendarily bad that it not only flopped upon its release but also helped inspire the Golden Raspberry Awards, a kind of anti-Oscars celebrating the year’s worst films. (Xanadu‘s director won its first Worst Director “award.”)
I decided I had to see for myself if it really was that bad. And yeah, it’s pretty bad. There’s hardly a plot to speak of. Newton-John turns out to be the muse of Beck’s character, sent to Earth to inspire him to create a musical club (the titular Xanadu); he spends the movie literally chasing her. Usually, musicals at least have the characters miming the words to songs, but in Xanadu, that happens only a handful of times. Instead, there are just scenes set to music with an uneven relationship to what is actually happening on-screen. (This “Redshirts” tribute video does a much better job at that.) There are bizarre scene transitions that PowerPoint could put to shame, cheesy ’80s special effects that other movies of the era were able to outdo, and pointless scenes that are interesting only for reflecting a trope (“Oh, look, a scene where characters try on new clothes in a mall“) or for reminding me of something else (“Well, this Don Bluth animated sequence sure does remind me of Thumbelina“). Also, everybody roller-skates.
So, is there anything good to say about Xanadu? Surprisingly . . . yes. Gene Kelly (yes, that one, in his final film role) is perfectly cast as a wistful elderly former band leader. We even get to see him dance at a spry 68. Newton-John doesn’t have much to work with, though her “struggle” to transcend the limitations of being a muse (once they have accomplished their requisite inspirational duties, they return to the realm of the gods and are forbidden relationships with mortals) perhaps unintentionally mirrors the attempt of her naturally effervescent, charismatic personality to transcend the trappings of a bad movie. The movie also makes some half-hearted gestures at interesting ideas about the nature of inspiration, the importance of hanging on to dreams, and how to merge the best of the past with the best of the present. Concerning the latter, especially, one scene that has a ’40s big band with an ’80s rock band reminds one of nothing so much as Electric Light Orchestra’s own aesthetic. There is, moreover, a kind of earnestness to the movie; in its lack of ambition (or plot, or appropriate choreography . . .), it unintentionally achieves a kind of purity that contrasts well, with, say, Grease. It’s not enough for me to agree fully with Kelly, who said of Xanadu that “the concept was marvelous, but it just didn’t come off.” But it wasn’t a totally joyless experience to slog through it.
And the soundtrack is pretty good, however imperfectly the songs from it can line up with what is actually going on. I’m more team ELO than team ONJ, though her talents are rightly well regarded. The ELO material on the Xanadu soundtrack is not the best ELO, but it’s still pretty good (my favorite: “I’m Alive“). The songs are perhaps a little too pop-oriented, though they would have fit in fine on Discovery, the disco-very album that ELO released just before Xanadu.
Jeff Lynne, the creative force behind the band, mainly signed on to do the movie because he wanted to meet the star (“I took it because I thought, well, I like Olivia. . . . She’s great. It would be nice to meet her”), and he had a strange working relationship with the production (writing songs to fit already filmed dance scenes, rather than the other way around). He says he has never seen the movie: “I wrote half the songs, though I’ve never seen the thing. I don’t suppose anybody else has, either. It was supposed to be really bad. I don’t think I’ll ever see the movie after reading the reviews.”
The best comparison I can think of to Xanadu is the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. Not the album, which Kyle Smith once argued is even better than Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but the movie. The Beatles, in peak “nothing is Beatle-proof” mode, decided they could make their own feature. The result is a plotless, meandering, surreal experience occasionally punctuated by great music (set to some pretty far-out scenes that amount to proto-music videos), best viewed in an unplanned manner around 2 a.m. on public television (i.e., the circumstances of my viewing it). Magical Mystery Tour, the movie, also flopped, but, as with Xanadu, its soundtrack did well. Xanadu actually gave the amazingly prolific ELO its only U.K. No. 1 hit, in the title track, on which Newton-John sings lead and Lynne, who produced it, does backing vocals. (ELO never had a U.S. No. 1, the strongest evidence yet against American exceptionalism.) Allegedly, even John Lennon liked some of the songs on Xanadu.
So, yes: Xanadu was a flop, so bad that some of the cast blamed it for destroying their careers. It’s a mess of a movie that I will never watch again. But the soundtrack is good, it didn’t destroy ELO (which went on to release the excellent concept album Time shortly after Xanadu) or Olivia Newton-John (who would, among other things, get “Physical” just a year later). And in spite of myself, there were bits here and there that I actually enjoyed. If nothing else, it’s a testament to the appeal of Newton-John that she was able to shine even in something this bad . . . and also that her career managed to thrive despite it. R.I.P. to a legend who could make even a bad movie worth watching.
Editor’s note: This article originally said Gene Kelly was 78 when Xanadu was released; he was 68. This has been corrected, and the attendant dig at Joe Biden, deleted.