Reeling Backward: Xanadu (1980)

The much-pilloried roller disco musical went on to become a Broadway hit and cult classic, and upon further reconsideration... still deserves its reputation as an all-time dud.

“Xanadu” had the misfortune of arriving featuring things that would very soon go out of style: disco, roller rinks and the film career of Olivia Newton-John.

Apologies if that last one seems cruel. Newton-John was an accomplished songstress from Down Under who would continue to enjoy hit songs well into the 1980s. But her tenure as a going concern in the movies really only lasted for two flicks: 1978’s mega-hit “Grease” made her a star, and this one was her undoing.

Of course, it’s hardly all Newton-John’s fault. The film was initially conceived as a quick/cheap piece of entertainment to exploit the then-popular music genre of disco and roller rinks, where the two often combined as intensely popular, if fleeting, pastimes for tweens and teens.

(I myself have vivid, miserable memories of being shunted off to roller disco nights at our local rink. I was far too young and uncoordinated to have the full enjoyment of such endeavors, which were designed as a venue for young love to express itself chastely.)

Then Newton-John joined the production and chaos ensued. The screenplay — officially credited to Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel — went through constant rewrites and changes while they were shooting. Many of the background sets look like they were still being built. Its almost total absence of a plot and overlong dancing/skating scenes makes it seem draggy at just 93 minutes.

The trailers for “Xanadu” make plain what they were going for, promising a return of “The girl you loved in ‘Grease!’” I guess they figured that, a couple of decent songs and some low-rent laser effects was all they needed for a hit.

Newton-John’s was hardly the only career sacrificed in the flames. It marked Gene Kelly’s last film credit — how would you like having that on your cinematic epitaph after the legendary run he’d enjoyed? Co-star Michael Beck, who had a breakout in 1979’s “The Warriors,” would see as his next feature film credit “Battletruck” — and that was probably a high point compared to what came after.

Director Robert Greenwald seems to have made out the best of the lot, going on to helm recognizable titles like “The Burning Bed,” “Hear No Evil” and “Steal This Movie,” and continues working today in what I’d call agitprop political fare.

Believe it or not, I’d never actually seen “Xanadu,” other than a few snippets here and there. Despite being a critical and box office bomb, it’s gone through extensive reconsideration and is now considered a cult classic and even enjoyed a successful Broadway adaptation in the late Aughts.

And whatever people say about the movie, the soundtrack was a legitimate hit, with Newton-John and collaborators the Electric Light Orchestra (and leader Jeff Lynne) enjoying five Top 20 singles, including “Magic” hitting the top spot.

So I figured it was time to revisit the much-pilloried musical. I also had the impetus of my oldest son playing in a summer theater camp production, so he wanted to check out the original flick for notes. (Apparently there’s little resemblance.)

And I learned that… it really does deserve its reputation as an all-time dud.

The movie was partly the inspiration for the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards for the worst in film each year. With its gossamer-thin story, cheesy production values and (un)special effects, it can only be properly enjoyed ironically.

Many people would call it camp, but my personal opinion is in order for something to be camp it has to be intentionally bad. The folks behind “Xanadu” really meant it.

Newton-John plays Kira, one of the eight Muses of Greek mythology, sent to Earth to inspire artists and dreamers. (Her real name is Terpsichore, Clio for the Broadway version.) Daddy Zeus (heard briefly toward the end in voiceover by Wilfrid Hyde-White) directed her to set in motion the creation of the titular nightclub.

Her primary instruments in this are struggling artist Sonny Malone (Beck) and construction mogul Danny Maguire (Kelly). Sonny works at AirFlo Records, a fourth-rate label in Los Angeles, turning album covers into display-size promotional paintings. (They didn’t have the capacity to blow up images in 1980??) Maguire was a clarinet player in a 1940s band who gave it up to build buildings.

In surely one of the weirdest love triangles in cinematic history, Kira actually visited Danny back in his heyday and charmed him, and when she decamped for her next assignment, he lost his zeal for creating music. Kira seems to have no memory of Danny, so it’s possible this muse only exists literally in the moment.

Her love for Sonny is real and mutual, so the big tension is that she will eventually need to leave him behind. Danny still adores Kira himself, though he appears content to subsist on old memories and help the young couple along.

Danny and Sonny go in partners to revive an old seaside auditorium that had been used in an album cover, with Kira magically appearing in the photo despite not being present for the shoot. The exteriors were shot at the actual Art Deco Pan-Pacific Auditorium, since torn down.

Kelly has a few nifty musical numbers, showing that in his late 60s he still had plenty of pep left in those ol’ dancing shoes. Probably the most memorable musical sequence in the movie is a sort of ghost dance with Kira as he savors his recollection of their days together in his youth, to the tune of Glenn Miller’s “You Made Me Love You.”

Another interesting one is “Dancin,’” in which Sonny and Danny each envision their idea of the perfect nightclub setting, with Sonny favoring an orange-clad rock band (played by the Tubes) and Danny a 1945-era swing band. Different dancers represent each era’s edgier aspects, from vaguely punk-ish to zoot-suits, and are surprisingly multicultural for the day, with a few individuals we’d even call gender-fluid today. Eventually the two sounds and groups merge into one.

It’s certainly not hard to pick which musical sequence is the worst. For “Don’t Walk Away” by ELO — actually a decent song — the movie goes into a very Disney-fied animation sequence, complete with Kira and Sonny prancing through a fantasyland forest, where they eventually transform into fish and birds, though still very much in love.

Competing for most awful is “Suspended in Time,” in which Newton-John performs while back in her native world of the gods, represented as laser-y outlines and primitive computerized backgrounds that look like a very beta version of the special effects from “Tron.”

The big number at the end is inside the newly commissioned club of Xanadu, which is really just a roller rink where everyone capers around a central stage where Kira will perform her final number, a pastiche of styles including a country-and-western bit that is positively painful. For some reason, the skaters’ tune sounds like a marching band song squeezed through a disco synthesizer.

Even as a throwaway confection, “Xanadu” just doesn’t bring the magic. It’s forgettable but not forgotten, clinging desperately to the long tail of pop culture mythology.