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"Xanadu" is a mushy and limp musical fantasy, so insubstantial it keeps evaporating before our eyes. It's one of those rare movies in which every scene seems to be the final scene; it's all ends and no beginnings, right up to its actual end, which is a cheat.

There are, however, a few - a very few reasons to see "Xanadu," which I list herewith: (1) Olivia Newton-John is a great-looking woman, brimming with high spirits, (2) Gene Kelly has a few good moments, (3) the sound track includes "Magic," if you haven't heard it enough already on the radio, and (4) it's not as bad as "Can't Stop the Music."

It is pretty bad, though. And yet it begins with an inspiration that I found appealing. It gives us a young man ( Michael Beck ) who falls in love with the dazzling fantasy figure (Newton-John) who keeps popping up in his life. Beck works as a commercial artist, designing record album covers, and when he tries to include Olivia in one of his paintings he gets into trouble at work.

That's ok, because he's met this nice older guy (Gene Kelly) who's very rich and wants to open a nightclub like the one he had back in New York in the 1940s. Kelly used to be a sideman in the Glenn Miller Orchestra (and also in the Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey bands, having apparently missed the Miller band's fatal last flight). In a quietly charming fantasy scene, he sings a duet with his old flame, the girl singer in the old Miller band-and, lo and behold, it's Olivia Newton-John.

That means both men are in love with the same dream girl, who, we discover, is not of this earth. They team up to convert a rundown old wrestling amphitheater into Xanadu, a nightclub that will combine the music of the 1940s and 1980s. And that is the whole weight of the movie's ideas, except for a scene where Michael Beck visits Olivia in heaven, which looks like a computer-generated disco light show.

Well, Hollywood musicals have been made with thinner plot lines than this one, but rarely with less style. The movie is muddy, it's underlit, characters are constantly disappearing into shadows, and there's no zest to the movie's look. Even worse, I'm afraid, is the choreography by Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent, especially as it's viewed by Victor Kemper's camera. The dance numbers in this movie do not seem to have been conceived for film.

For example: When Beck and Kelly visit the empty amphitheater, Kelly envisions a '40s band in one corner and an '80s rock group in another. The movie gives us one of each: Andrews Sisters clones in close harmony, and the Electric Light Orchestra in full explosion. Then the two bandstands are moved together so they blend and everyone is on one bandstand, singing one song. It's a great idea, but the way this movie handles it, it's an incomprehensible traffic jam with dozens of superfluous performers milling about.

The Ortega-Trent choreography of some of the other numbers is just as bad. They keep giving us five lines of dancers and then shooting at eye level, so that instead of seeing patterns we see confusing cattle calls. The dancers in the background of most shots muddy the movements of the foreground. It's a free-for-all.

The movie approaches desperation at times in its attempt to be all things to all audiences. Not only do we get the 1940s swing era, but a contemporary sequence starts with disco, goes to hard rock, provides an especially ludicrous country and Western sequence, and moves on into prefabricated New Wave. There are times when "Xanadu" doesn't even feel like a movie fantasy, but like a shopping list of marketable pop images. Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed the poem "Xanadu" but woke up before it was over, a possibility overlooked by the makers of this film.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Xanadu Reviews

…This may not be Xanadu as Orson Welles or Coleridge imagined it, but it you’re looking for a gaudy pleasuredome with Gene Kelly dancin’ to ELO, you’re absolutely welcome to this one…

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 24, 2022

It was never designed to age well and oddly, because of that fact, it remains relevant to this day. It's this impermanence that makes Xanadu feel significant; a then-product now-relic of the 1970s that celebrates the disco-era long after its demise.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2021

Xanadu offers a wealth of special effects entrancingly strung out along a rather impoverished screenplay.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 27, 2020

The excessive effects and music are the main protagonists in this story where the best part is the choreography. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 13, 2019

Xanadu is total confection. It's 100% ridiculous. Very little of it makes sense.... They really should have nixed the idea of finding a Gibb look-a-like and went with a song-and-dance man instead.

Full Review | Aug 11, 2019

"Xanadu" cannot possibly be described as a good movie, but it can be recommended to those who can tolerate large amounts of intravenous marzipan.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2019

A laugh if only for its mind-boggling awfulness.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 1, 2019

This modern musical with tunes written by Where Are They Now pop band ELO falls flat on its face simply because the premise is so utterly ludicrous.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 1, 2019

Though meant to be a throwback to old-style Hollywood musicals, XANADU merely replaces style and substance with flash and glitz...

Olivia Newton-John's encore-after Grease-is an awkward musical fantasy that dooms the Australian songbird to play a muse, one of Zeus' nine daughters.

Engagingly surrealistic in a pop-glitter way.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2019

What could have possessed the people involved in Xanadu to go ahead with this utter nonsense?

Full Review | Mar 27, 2019

It strives mightily to achieve magic, but for all its sunbeams, mirages and tricky dissolves, it remains humorless and earthbound.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2019

Looks more like a nouveau record album cover come to life.

This is not nostalgia: it's a choreographer's worst nightmare.

The acting is wooden, the direction and cinematography confused, the special effects largely out of place, the dramatic interest nonexistent.

Full Review | Apr 28, 2018

Here's another musical mishap that landed on Creative Loafing's list of The 10 Worst Rock Films Ever Made, taking the #3 slot just under Staying Alive and the champ, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 12, 2016

Yup. This movie is stupid.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 12, 2012

Stupendously bad.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2009

Look at Xanadu with an eye toward storytelling superiority and your head will explode. To appreciate the madness within, one must take in the blinding neon sights with an open heart and at least one nostril-coating line of cocaine.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jun 29, 2008

Xanadu (1980)

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Thursday, August 2, 2012

Xanadu (1980) - quite simply, one of my favorites.

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Release details.

• Duration: 96 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Robert Greenwald
• Screenwriter: Marc Reid Rubel, Richard Christian Danus
• Michael Beck
• Sandahl Bergman
• Katie Hanley
• Olivia Newton-John
• James Sloyan
• Dimitra Arliss

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Xanadu Review

01 Jan 1980

Fresh from co-starring in Grease, the liveliest musical of the post-studio era and the genre's biggest ever commercial success, Olivia Newton John made the mistake of trying to float a conceit that had already confounded Fred Astaire in Yolanda and the Thief, Rita Hayworth in Down to Earth and Ava Gardner in One Touch of Venus.

       Not even the presence of Gene Kelly, who was archly named after his character in Cover Girl, could elevate the stubbornly earthbound proceedings - not that he was allowed to, however. He got to rollerskate, as he had done in  It's Always Fair Weather, and his duet with Olivia on `Whenever You're Away from Me' is the film's highlight. But this was an Olivia Newton John vehicle and Kelly was simply there to make her look good and lure the nostalgic away from their TV sets.

       Of necessity, the plotline was risible. But Newton John totally lacked the screen presence to carry off such an ethereal role. Moreover, her dramatic shortcomings were cruelly exacerbated by the inanimation of Michael Beck, as she was too often left to carry their scenes on her own. She made the most of tunes like ex-husband John Farrar's `Magic' and the Jeff Lynne title theme (both of which charted well), but the inability to dance that had been disguised as best as possible in Grease was exposed by Kenny Ortega choreography that fell far short of the zeitgeist chic he managed to achieve in Saturday Night Fever.

       However, Xanadu's gravest fault was its cynical resort to the Golden Age in a bid to appeal to the widest possible constituency. There was no real affection for the MGM style here, just an exploitative MTV-era pastiche that plugged gaps that the dismal pop of the late 1970s couldn't hope to fill.

          Olivia met future husband Matt Lattanzi during the shoot (he played the younger Kelly). But she failed to learn anything from the film's failure and, three years later, played another heavenly messenger in her calamitous reunion with John Travolta, Two of a Kind.

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20 Things You Didn't Know About 'Xanadu', History's Greatest Roller Skating Disco Musical

A look back at some of the behind-the-scenes stories from this Olivia Newton-John cult favorite

Roller skating. Greek mythology. Hollywood. Olivia Newton-John . Gene Kelly. Electric Light Orchestra. By some measures, Xanadu should have been a hit.

It wasn’t, however. Upon its release in theaters on Aug. 8, 1980 – 35 years ago this week – the disco musical Xanadu was met with negative reviews and middling box office returns. That didn’t stop it, however, and this hypercolor fantasy has persisted, becoming a cult favorite in spite of its inauspicious beginnings.

In honor of the fact that Xanadu has endured and overcome its rough start, we’re celebrating the film’s 35th anniversary with behind-the-scenes stories that fans may not know.

1. It could have co-starred Mel Gibson.

Newton-John was the producers’ first choice to play the female lead, Kira. Once she landed the part, she had someone in mind to play her love interest: “an unknown Australian named Mel Gibson,” according to Entertainment Weekly . In the end, however, the role went to actor Michael Beck, who’d previously starred in The Warriors .

2. It’s kinda-sorta a remake.

The 1947 film Down to Earth features Rita Hayworth as a muse who descends to the realm of humans and falls for a Broadway producer. That’s not exactly the plot of Xanadu , but doesn’t it sound like a ’40s version of the same basic story that Xanadu tells? It should: the latter is a loose remake of the former.

3. But it’s actually more complicated than that.

Down to Earth was a follow-up to 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan , which also dealt with otherworldly beings getting involved with the lives of mortals. (Two actors from Mr. Jordan reprise their roles in Down to Earth .) This original film has been remade twice – once as 1978’s Heaven Can Wait , starring Warren Beatty , and again in 2001 as Down to Earth , starring Chris Rock . All of the films are adaptations of the play Heaven Can Wait . So that means that Xanadu is a remake of a sequel to a movie adaptation of a play.

4. And that’s not even the end of it.

Xanadu stars Gene Kelly as Danny McGuire, a former big band leader who lost his muse ages ago. In the 1944 musical Cover Girl , Kelly played a character who works in a nightclub and happens to have the name Danny McGuire. If that weren’t connection enough already, Cover Girl has Kelly romancing Rita Hayworth, who played the muse in Down to Earth that serves as the inspiration for Newton-John’s character in Xanadu .

Mimi and Olivia Newton-John, Ben Stiller’s Sweet Goodbye to Anne Meara, & Happy Anniversary Kimye!

5. it’s kelly’s final role..

Given that Xanadu wasn’t warmly received, it’s a bit of bummer that it ended up being Kelly’s last turn in a feature film. (He appeared in two TV roles before dying in 1996.) Kelly himself was aware that the film hadn’t lived up to expectations. The book The Films of Gene Kelly, Song and Dance Man has Kelly summing up the experience with one decisive sentence: “The concept was marvelous, but it just didn’t come off.”

In a 2012 interview with The Daily Herald , Newton-John said she understood what an honor it was to work with Kelly in his final film regardless. “He was lovely,” she said. “I still can’t believe I danced with Gene Kelly. How lucky am I that I’ve been in movies where I’ve danced with two of the greatest dancers of all time – with Gene Kelly and John Travolta? I never would have thought that because I had two left feet growing up.”

6. And in Kelly’s big scene there’s yet another movie connection…

Kelly himself choreographed his dance number with Newton-John, and the dance moves they perform are extremely similar to ones he’d performed when he danced with Judy Garland in the 1942 film For Me and My Gal . So in many ways, Xanadu is as much about Kelly’s own storied musical career as it is about roller skating and neon. Who knew?

7. Newton-John broke her coccyx while filming the number for "Suddenly."

Ouch. Just ouch. But hey – she soldiered through anyway.

8. She wasn’t just playing any muse.

Though she’s hushed from speaking her true name out loud, Kira tries to tell Beck’s character that she’s actually “Terpsichore.” In Greek mythology, Terpsichore (literally “delight in dancing”) was the muse of dance and chorus. And sure – “Kira” seems like as sensible a nickname for “Terpsichore” as anything, right? It beats “Terps.”

9. Xanadu brought about at least one wedding.

Newton-John met her first husband – actor Matt Lattanzi, who played the young version of Kelly’s character in the film – while on set. They were married from 1984 to 1995.

10. It also helped jump-start the solo career of animator Don Bluth.

At one point in the film, a musical number transforms into a cartoon sequence. The animation was done by Don Bluth, who had recently departed from Disney. Following Xanadu , Bluth’s production company made its first feature-length animated movie, The Secret of NIMH . Bluth later directed An American Tale and The Land Before Time as well.

11. And it helped launch the career of Kenny Ortega.

If you remember the production for the song “Dancin’,” then you probably know that quite a bit went into the dance numbers in Xanadu . “Dancin’ ” is in particular a marvel, if one that’s very of-the-era. Kenny Ortega, who planned the choreography alongside Jerry Trent, went on to a high-profile career. Today, he counts among his hits Pretty in Pink , Dirty Dancing , Newsies , Hocus Pocus and the High School Musical movies.

12. It also features a Conan cohort in a small role.

Sandahl Bergman, who is perhaps most famous for playing the female warrior Valeria in Conan the Barbarian in 1982, was originally a dancer. In Xanadu , she plays one of the muses.

13. It spawned a No. 1 hit.

People may not have initially flocked to theaters to catch Xanadu , but they loved the soundtrack, and the single “Magic” scored Newton-John a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks in August 1980.

14. The title track also went to No. 1, just not in the U.S.

Newton-John collaborated with Electric Light Orchestra for the title track. Though it fared well enough in the U.S., reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, the track was a huge international hit, reaching No. 1 in England, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Austria.

15. In fact, the soundtrack was a bigger success than the movie.

The album went double platinum in the U.S. and managed five Top 20 hits, including “Magic,” “Xanadu,” “Suddenly,” “All over the World” and “I’m Alive.”

16. The reviews for the movie, however, were not so enthusiastic.

In fact, two of them stand out as being especially pithy in their meanness. Esquire famously summed up the movie in a single sentence: “In a word, Xana-don’t.” Variety got in a good jab too, describing Newton-John’s character – who glowed periodically, because, you know, muse magic, I guess? – as “a roller skating lightbulb.” Womp womp.

17. It helped start the Golden Raspberry Awards.

The Golden Raspberries, for those who are too nice to pay attention, honor the worst of a given year’s cinematic efforts. They were born after their creator, John Wilson, sat through Xanadu and another not-so-kindly reviewed musical from 1980. As Wilson explained to TIME , “I happened to pay 99 cents for a double feature of Can’t Stop the Music and Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu and was refused my money back afterward.” At the inaugural awards, Can’t Stop the Music beat out Xanadu for Worst Picture, and Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon beat out Newton-John for Worst Actress.

18. The nightclub was a real place – but it is no longer.

The beautiful streamline moderne building that becomes the eponymous nightclub in the film was actually the Pan Pacific Auditorium, which was once a popular venue in Los Angeles. When Xanadu used it for its exterior scenes, it had fallen into disrepair, and in 1989, it burned to the ground. Today, the site is a park that in part reflects the beautiful architecture seen in Xanadu .

19. There’s also a darker footnote to Xanadu ‘s legacy.

In 1983, Newton-John’s starring role in Xanadu prompted Louisiana resident Michael Owen Perry to think that the actress actually was a Greek goddess who used her eyes to communicate with him. The story, as summarized by Entertainment Weekly , ended with Perry going on a killing spree. Speaking to EW , Newton-John said the incident marked a frightening moment in her high-profile career. “I guess because I was playing this ethereal character, he got reality and show business confused,” she said. “I left the country for a while. That was a very scary time.”

20. Xanadu the musical got all the praise that Xanadu the movie didn’t

Preserving many of the hit songs from the original movie but substantially rewriting the story and dialogue, the Broadway musical Xanadu opened in 2007 and proved to be a success with critics and audiences alike. It was nominated for four Tony Awards and and closed in 2008, after 49 previews and 513 performances.

And just for the record, this play would be a Broadway adaptation of an ’80s film that was a remake of a sequel to a 1941 movie that was originally a play. Whew. That’s enough to necessitate a disco nap.

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Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1980 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.

We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.

Yes, we’re insane, but 1980 was that great of a year for film.

The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1980 so that it is their true 40th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.

This time around it’s Aug. 8, 1980, and we’re off to see Xanadu !

Quick side note: Since we launched this series this year, we’ve discovered that Vintage Video Podcast is doing the exact same project with two differences: First, it’s audio (naturally), and second, they are doing every major film. We’ve listened to a couple of episodes and it’s fun checking off their thoughts against my own. Check them out over at Vintage Video Podcast .

As I was experiencing Xanadu – I don’t feel you watch this movie, you experience it – I kept wondering about a huge missed opportunity. Early in the film we see the nine Muses of Greek mythology spring to life out of a mural.  And I kept thinking, “Why didn’t they have Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) be the painter of this since he’s an artist in this story?”

It seems at one point in the filming that was actually the plan, and that plot point was brought back for the Broadway musical. This also, however, explains nearly every problem with this film where everything feels half-baked. It seems the script was being written as they filmed and no one was quite sure where it was going.

What we end up with is something that feels like a bunch of music videos strapped together with a threadbare plot that doesn’t know where it’s going or how it’s getting there.

The film was apparently originally pitched as a roller disco film, but as the cast started to take shape the story – if you can call it that – evolved. In it’s final state it was was a critical and financial flop and actually inspired the creation of the Golden Raspberry awards along with Can’t Stop the Music from earlier in the year.

As the movie progressed, I came to the conclusion that it could be the worst film I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen some clunkers, but this is so outrightly bad it’s difficult to believe anyone looked at the finished product and went, “Yeah, I want my name on this.”

And Gene Kelly as Danny McGuire… oof. Imagine having this as your last film credit. I will say that both he and Olivia Newton-John as Kira/Terpsichore gave the film their all, but it was just one bad setup after another.

They made Gene Kelly tap dance in roller skates for crying out loud.

Despite how just outrightly bad this film is, I can’t help but suggest you watch it. The level of absurdity, especially in the ending nightclub scene, is something to just behold.

If nothing else, enjoy the scene of the Muses awakening. Newton-John’s finger work here is… something.

1980 Movie Reviews will return on Aug. 15 with The Octagon , The Kidnapping of the President , and Smokey and the Bandit II !

Fun Jug Media, LLC (operating TheNerdy.com) has affiliate partnerships with various companies. These do not at any time have any influence on the editorial content of The Nerdy. Fun Jug Media LLC may earn a commission from these links.

Sean P. Aune

Sean Aune has been a pop culture aficionado since before there was even a term for pop culture. From the time his father brought home Amazing …

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Xanadu (United States, 1980)

How, one might ask, does one begin to defend Xanadu ? To start with, by looking at it without any pretensions and seeing it for what it is. Conventional wisdom decrees that Xanadu is a horrible film. In a sense, conventional wisdom may be correct, but it ignores one key ingredient: viewed in the right frame of mind, this movie can be a lot of fun. Age has done for Xanadu what it has done for many critically reviled motion pictures that time has not forgotten: allowed us to look at it a little more kindly and appreciate it for its glorious badness. The film is too energetic, too jaw-droppingly campy, and too silly not to be enjoyed and celebrated on some level. "Cheesy" doesn't even begin to describe it, yet that's at the heart of its perverse charm. Now, that's entertainment!

Officially, I consider Xanadu to be a guilty pleasure. "Guilty," because no self-respecting film critic in his right mind would admit to liking it, and "pleasure," because I do like it. Over the quarter century since its 1980 release, Xanadu has developed a cult following and has made more than twice the amount of money on home video that it captured at the box office. The film is often referred to as a flop, but that's not entirely accurate. While it's true that it didn't make back its $20 million budget on the big screen, the numbers aren't as bad as some think them to be. For example, during its opening weekend, it made $1.5 million. That's not a lot, but converting it to a modern day opening, it looks better. Average ticket prices today are about 2.4 times what they were in 1980, and Xanadu opened on 250 screens, which is about 1/10 of the number it would open on today. Doing the math, Xanadu 's adjusted opening weekend box office would be $36 million, which is respectable.

If you conduct an on-line search for the word "Xanadu," you will get an amazing array of responses. It's the "Orginal Hypertex Project." It's a language and translation wizard. It's a swingers club in Manchester. It's an undersea adventure company. It's Charles Foster Kane's fortress. It's Kubla Khan's pleasure dome. And it's a 1980 film starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly. The movie was intended to catapult Newton-John onto the A-list and give Kelly a chance to strut his stuff for a new generation. Instead, it ended up pretty much finishing both of their acting careers. Kelly never made another feature film (by choice - after Xanadu , he only appeared in a couple of TV mini-series), and Newton-John went back to music. Within a year, she would release the smash, multi-platinum album, "Physical."

Xanadu cannot be watched with anything resembling a serious mindset. Enjoy it for its garishness. Enjoy it for its silliness. Enjoy it for the soundtrack (the product of John Farrar and ELO). But, most of all, enjoy it for Newton-John. She may not be the greatest actress of her generation, but she's gorgeous, and she has a great singing voice. She was at the peak of her career in 1980 - the girl next door and every teenage boy's wet dream all rolled into one. Watching her in this, her second best-known role (after Grease ), it's almost possible to believe she is a Muse sent by Zeus. The precise Muse is Terpsichore, whose specialty is dancing. I guess that's the closest one comes to roller skating, which is what this film is about. Xanadu was originally conceived as a roller-disco picture (they, like skating, were all the rage in the time period), but it underwent significant changes during pre-production.

Then there's the late Gene Kelly. Some long-time fans have lamented that this represents Kelly's farewell to feature films, but the venerable song-and-dance man "got" the movie. It was a throwback to his bread-and-butter - an attempt to re-create '50s musicals in the early '80s (a marriage between disco and retro). It wasn't a good one (director Robert Greenwald was in way over his head), to be sure, but it gave Kelly an opportunity to do what he was best at, even at age 68. It always brings a smile to my face to see him show a few moves, even amidst all the corniness. And, believe or not, we get to see Kelly on skates.

What's the story? Does it matter? Zeus' Muses arrive in 1980 Southern California to spread inspiration. Kira (Newton-John) has been selected to re-invigorate the love of painting in Sonny Malone (Michael Beck). She does so with a kiss and a lot of roller skating, which I suppose functions as foreplay for the PG crowd. Around this time, Sonny befriends old-timer Danny McGuire (Kelly), a former Big Band musician who wants to open a dance club. With more than a little help from Kira, the two become partners and the result of their efforts is "Xanadu," the hottest night spot in the Beverly Hills area. But there's trouble ahead for Sonny and Kira. Zeus wants his daughter home, and he's not happy that she developed feelings for a mortal. He's also probably a little cranky because Mount Olympus has gone all neon.

I have heard that Xanadu is popular in the gay culture, which doesn't surprise me. The film has the kind of flair that would make it a hit among those who delight in kitsch. The acting (especially by Andy Gibb-lookalike Beck) is awful, the storyline is too moronic to be called trite, and the set decorations appear to have been designed by someone who was experiencing an LSD flashback. Yet, there's fun to be had for anyone who likes the music (which I do). This is, after all, a musical, and the stench of ripe cheese can be set aside if it offers pleasure to the palate. The soundtrack soared. Of its ten tracks, two ("Magic" and "Xanadu") were hits. Two more ("Suddenly" and "Don't Walk Away") got significant airplay. "All Over the World" is a lingering favorite, although that probably has something to do with the truly bizarre way in which it is presented. These are the '80s at their worst.

There are two likely reactions to Xanadu , both of which are valid. One is to turn it off midway through because the headache is getting too severe. The other is to laugh and hum your way through it. Newton-John brings warmth and appeal. Kelly brings a touch of class and a reason for lovers of the great MGM musicals to smile. And Beck brings great hair. Don Bluth gives us a magical little animated sequence (which really doesn't belong in this movie, but never mind). Xanadu may not achieve its director's original lofty ambitions but, by failing so spectacularly, it has become much more. Had the film been a modest financial and creative success, it would likely be forgotten today. As it is, however, "Xanadu" has become more closely associated with this film than with all the other aforementioned things combined.

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MISS NEWTON-JOHN IN 'XANADU'

By Janet Maslin

• Aug. 9, 1980

I was puzzled by the ads for ''Xanadu,'' because they showed a large likeness of Olivia Newton-John and otherwise gave no idea what sort of movie this could be. Now I understand. ''Xanadu'' doesn't lend itself to quick or easy characterization. Too many different things are going on here, and they don't have much to do with one another. On the other hand, this is still a very muted movie, so ads that created an impression of general frenzy wouldn't do the trick, either. Miss Newton-John really is the film's only clear-cut drawing card.

In ''Xanadu,'' which opened yesterday at the Criterion Center and other theaters, Miss Newton-John plays the magical woman with whom both a young artist (Michael Beck) and a less young former musician (Gene Kelly) have been smitten. It seems she is a muse, who 40 years ago brightened Mr. Kelly's life and is now doing the same for Mr. Beck. The film treats this fanciful notion gently, without overworking it, but the muse theme does have one depressing aspect. The film makers, evidently not confident that the audience will know who muses are or what they do, has Miss Newton-John tell Mr. Beck to look up the word in the dictionary. And he does.

Unlike old-fashioned muses, Miss Newton-John does much of her work on roller skates, although the skating portions of the movie, like its musical numbers, have a desultory feeling. The music, performed by Miss Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra, is pretty without being peppy, and it doesn't complement the action very effectively. Many of Miss Newton-John's songs are offered as voiceovers while she skates, which minimizes their sparkle considerably.

The director, Robert Greenwald, has filled the movie with bright colors -people often turn into beams of light or are surrounded by neonlike coronas. There are dozens and dozens of costume changes, lots of dance numbers, even an animated segment midway through. Like ''The Wiz,'' though, ''Xanadu'' is desperately stylish without having any real style. A dance number featuring two teams of dancers -one group dressed as punks, the other in 1940's garb - winds up a terrible mess, because the two groups aren't dressed or choreographed to have anything to do with one another.

Mr. Kelly, who dances a little and even rollerskates in one scene, is forever charming, but why this movie needed him is unclear. Mr. Beck fares best in the quieter scenes that show him at work as a commercial artist, but the big numbers leave him overwhelmed. Miss Newton-John looks pretty and sings a little and is probably doing just what her fans would like her to do. But it's a pity ''Xanadu'' hasn't more real pizazz.

''Xanadu'' is rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''). It contains fleeting nudity and some mildly suggestive dancing.

XANADU, directed by Robert Greenwald; written by Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel; director of photography, Victor J. Kemper; edited by Dennis Virkler; music by Barry DeVorzon, Jeff Lyne and John Farrar; produced by Lawrence Gordon; released by Universal Studios. At the Trans-Lux 85th Street, at Madison Avenue; Plaza, 58th Street, east of Madison Avenue; Criterion I, Broadway and West 45th Street, and other theaters. Running time: 93 minutes. This film is rated PG.

Kira . . . . . Olivia Newton-JohnDanny McGuire . . . . . Gene KellySonny Malone . . . . . Michael BeckSimpson . . . . . James SloyanHelen . . . . . Dimitra ArlissSandra . . . . . Katie HanleyRichie . . . . . Fred McCarrenJo . . . . . Ren WoodsMuses . . . . . Sandahl Bergman, Lynn Latham, Melinda Phelps, Cherise Bate, Juliette Marshall, Marilyn Tokuda, Yvette Van Voorhees and Teri Beckerman

By Phil Hall | August 11, 2005

It needs to be said! It must be said! And here, on the 25th anniversary of its theatrical premiere, it will be said: “Xanadu” is the greatest movie musical ever made!

No, this review is not being co-written with input from Jim Beam or Jack Daniels. I can gladly throw caution to the wind and open myself to the slings and arrows of outrageous readers in claiming that the 1980 roller disco musical starring Olivia Newton-John is the very pinnacle of the movie musical genre. More so than “The Wizard of Oz” or “Singin’ in the Rain” or “The Sound of Music” or any other musical you can name.

Perhaps I need to clarify my enthusiasm a bit. Does “Xanadu” possess the best musical score of all time? No, not in the least, but it is a damn fine score. Is it the most artistically inventive musical? Not at all – no one would ever mistake director Robert Greenwald with Bob Fosse or Vincente Minnelli. Does it offer the best choreography of all time? Well, the roller skating numbers are fun, but there are other films with superior dance numbers.

So how does “Xanadu” qualify as the greatest movie musical? Simple: it offers nothing but pure wall-to-wall fun and nonsense to keep a smile on one’s face from the opening credits (which cleverly spoof the logo of Universal Pictures) through the end of the picture.

“Xanadu” (like many great musicals) is based on another source, in this case the 1947 movie “Down to Earth.” This time around, it is L.A. circa 1980 and a talented artist named Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) who is employed painting large advertising reproductions of album covers finds his muse – literally, she is Terpsichore, the muse of dance, and a daughter of Zeus and Hera of Mount Olympus fame (but it is called Mount Halcyon here). She emerges with her multicultural sister-muses out of a mural to roller skate about L.A. She takes the nom-de-muse Kira and brings forth inspiration with an adorable Australian accent. Of course, she is played by Olivia Newton-John, but we’ll genuflect to her glory shortly.

Sonny is not Kira’s first outlet for inspiration. Some four decades earlier, she inspired a clarinetist named Danny Maguire to find his musical dream. Alas, the years forced Danny to become practical and he turned into a filthy rich businessman. Danny is played by Gene Kelly, who was 68 when he made this film and was still in fine dancing form.

To make a long screenplay short, Kira’s muse magic inspires Danny and Sonny to turn a dilapidated auditorium into a roller disco mecca. Danny has the money, Sonny has the décor ideas, and together they create Xanadu. But in a spot of bad timing, Kira is called back to her parents in Museville. But Sonny realizes where she is living: inside the mural from where she first appeared. Sonny roller skates into the mural and winds up in a groovy netherworld where he confronts Zeus (offered up as the disembodied voice of British actor Alex Hyde-White) to get Kira’s return. Needless to say, old Zeus finds it in his big old Greek god heart to let Kira go back to Sonny in time for the film’s grand finale.

Is this a dumb story? You bet! But it is a happy sort of dumbness; it is escapist-silly without being emotionally-stupid. This is a movie where Olivia Newton-John dances out of a mural, straps on roller skates and heads to the beach while the soundtrack throbs with the Electric Light Orchestra wailing “I’m alive!” – hell, is anyone expecting Bergman or Tarkovsky here?

And now we can worship Olivia Newton-John. This woman is f*****g gorgeous in “Xanadu” – it is easy for anyone to be inspired by her. She wears scores of great costumes (including an end-of-the-world cape with triangular collar in the closing number), and she dances, and she sings, and she acts – okay, she can’t act, but she looks so fantastic that it is easy to overlook this. In fact, Newton-John is such a strong presence that her sex appeal and star power compensates for Michael Beck’s lack of both as her leading man. (Beck was the bad boy star of “The Warriors,” but he strangely failed to bring his energy from that flick to “Xanadu.”)

But then there’s Gene Kelly, who gamely goes through his song-and-dance routine while clearly winking at the audience that he knows this is a wacky movie. He enjoys a nicely nostalgic dream sequence dance number with Newton-John, who dresses in a 1940s outfit in recalling her previous incarnation as his muse, and then he good-naturedly does a zany clothing make-over number which allows him to try on inappropriate outfits (imagine Gene Kelly dressed as a pimp!). And in the finale, when Xanadu opens for business, Kelly gets on the roller skates and leads an army of dancers in a wild spin on wheels. Seeing someone of Kelly’s age doing something as vigorous as this is quite a site, and the veteran showman keeps his grin wide as he skates about with supersonic abandon.

The “Xanadu” musical numbers must be seen to be believed. At one point, Newton-John and Beck turn into cartoon fish (courtesy of Don Bluth’s animation) while professing their love in dance. In another turn, Kelly and Beck envision their Xanadu as a mix of 1940s and 1980 musical style, which comes alive in a battle of dance squads (the 1940s embodied in zoot suited dancers, 1980 in the hideous New Wave fashion that was chic back when). And then there is that grand finale, with Newton-John going through a skein of costumes while switching between disco, country and rock to announce the glory of her roller heaven:

“A place where nobody dared to go, the love that we came to know, They call it Xanadu! And now, open your eyes and see, what we have made is real, We are in Xanadu!”

A few years ago, I saw “Xanadu” with audiences at a pair of revival screenings in New York. One of the screenings was primarily populated with teen girls, the other with gay guys who seemed to be in their 30s and 40s. And while those two audiences seemed to have no common bond, they both reacted wildly to the film. The teen girls bounced (literally) to the music, giggled at the loved scenes and cheered wildly when love conquered all amidst the Xanadu roller experience. The gay guys grooved to the music (no one was bouncing, at least not from where I was observing), giggled at the camp appeal of the film’s romantic entanglements, and cheered as Newton-John changed costumes that kept getting grander and crazier with each new turn.

So is “Xanadu” strictly for teen girls and gay camp aficionados? Not likely. “Xanadu” is a delightful fantasy blessed with a surprisingly sturdy score (the soundtrack was a number one album and spawned several hit songs) and a rather wonderfully naïve notion that love and roller skating can always save the day. It is the rare film that can literally suck you out of today’s cynical and increasingly dangerous world into a nutty parallel universe, and then deposit you back with a sense of exhilaration and good cheer in your system. The film was a commercial flop when it debuted 25 years ago, but that is no surprise: old-fashioned escapism and innocent fun was considered passé then. Today, it is a valuable commodity and “Xanadu” is a major gem because of its innocence and delirious spirit.

Yeah, there are musicals with more panache and brainpower. You can keep ‘em! For me, I want to see Olivia Newton-John spinning about on roller skates. She’s my muse, and “Xanadu” is my musical!

“The love, the echoes of long ago, you needed the world to know They are in Xanadu! The dream that came through a million years That lived on through all the tears, it came to Xanadu!”

Universal wasn’t planning a special re-release, so let me pick up for their sloppiness and say: Happy 25th anniversary, “Xanadu”!

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Review: Zendaya's 'Challengers' serves up saucy melodrama – and some good tennis, too

The saucy tennis melodrama “Challengers” is all about the emotional games we play with each other, though there are certainly enough volleys, balls and close-up sweat globules if you’re more into jockstraps than metaphors.

Italian director Luca Guadagnino ( “Call Me By Your Name” ) puts an art-house topspin on the sports movie, with fierce competition, even fiercer personalities and athletic chutzpah set to the thumping beats of a techno-rific Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score. “Challengers” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) centers on the love triangle between doubles partners-turned-rivals ( Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor ) and a teen wunderkind ( Zendaya ) and how lust , ambition and power dynamics evolve their relationships over the course of 13 years.

The movie opens with Art (Faist) and Tashi (Zendaya) as the It couple of pro tennis: He’s eyeing a U.S. Open title, the only tournament he’s never won, while she’s his intense coach, manager and wife, a former sensation along the lines of a Venus or Serena whose career was cut short by a gnarly knee injury. To build up his flagging confidence after recent losses, Tashi enters Art in a lower-level event that he can dominate – until he faces ex-bestie Patrick (O’Connor) in the final match.

Justin Kuritzkes’ soapy screenplay bounces between that present and the trios’ complicated past via flashbacks, starting when Art and Patrick – a ride-or-die duo known as “Fire and Ice” – both have eyes for Tashi. All three are 18 and the hormones are humming: The boys have been tight since they were preteens at boarding school, but a late-night, three-way makeout session, and the fact that she’ll only give her number to whoever wins the guys' singles match, creates a seismic crack that plays itself out over the coming years.

All three main actors ace their arcs and changing looks over time – that’s key in a nonlinear film like this that’s all over the place. As Tashi, Zendaya plays a woman who exudes an unshakable confidence, though her passion for these two men is seemingly her one weakness. Faist (“West Side Story”) crafts Art as a talented precision player whose love for the game might not be what it once was, while O’Connor (“The Crown”) gives Patrick a charming swagger with and without a racket, even though his life has turned into a bit of a disaster.

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From the start, the men's closeness hints at something more than friendship, a quasi-sexual tension that Tashi enjoys playing with: She jokes that she doesn’t want to be a “homewrecker” yet wears a devilish smile when Art and Patrick kiss, knowing the mess she’s making.

Tennis is “a relationship,” Tashi informs them, and Guadagnino uses the sport to create moments of argumentative conversation as well as cathartic release. Propelled by thumping electronica, his tennis scenes mix brutality and grace, with stylish super-duper close-ups and even showing the ball’s point of view in one dizzying sequence. Would he do the same with, say, curling or golf? It’d be cool to see because more often than not, you want to get back to the sweaty spectacle.

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While “Challengers” falls nebulously somewhere between a coming-of-age flick, dysfunctional relationship drama and snazzy sports extravaganza, Guadagnino nevertheless holds serve with yet another engaging, hot-blooded tale of flawed humans figuring out their feelings.

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