Xanadu

[jc@ZapEmail.com]

Andrew, You obviously lack the one thing necessary to thourghly enjoy this movie....a crush on Oliva Newton-John. i saw it in '81 and almost named my daughter Kira (switched to Cara instead).

[lisa.gooding@reichhold.com]

OK Andrew, you are obviously not part of what was the targetted audience here.  I don't think I know a girl that is around my age that didn't LOVE Xanadu.  It had everything a little girl growing up in the late 70's/early 80's dreamed of...love, magic, & rollerskating.  Anyway, I love this movie no matter how corny you or anyone else says.  So there, NAH!! ;-)

[gsi24850@gsaix2.cc.gasou.edu]

Oooooh, roller-skating... Olivia Newton-John... My dreams have come... and gotten shot.  Hell, I saw this movie when it came out and I was severely disappointed even then, Olivia's shiny cheeks aside.  Zeus is the god of gods, the wielder of thunderbolts, conquerer of titans, and wooer of earthly women, I thought to myself.  What the hell does roller-skating have to do with his interests?  I figured if I was the head honcho of my own pantheon, I'd be a bit more imaginative than that...

[think1964@hotmail.com]

I have to agree with Lisa...you were not the targeted audience for this movie.  I also loved the movie.  If everybody liked the same things this world would be completely boring...so it's okay if you didn't like it.  :-)

[NC]

Ok I first saw this movie when it was first out on tape. I borrowed my cousins' dubbed copy and never gave it back to them. Really I didn't like the movie except for the intro sequence and Michael Beck that played Sonny. I guess you could say that I had a crush on him, but being only around 7/8 years old it was more like I thought he was a cool guy. And I wore out the tape fastforwarding through all of the dumb parts like the '40s style number. Now I'm an adult (26), haven't seen Xanadu in 17 years, and since rediscovering Beck's 'good' movie 'The Warriors' will never have to watch Xanadu every again if I want to fawn over how great Beck and his hair looked way back when.

[Novaheart]

Two words: Oliva & Gene!! This movie rocks!! I love its disco/art deco fusion, sure the acting is horrible, and the dialog is completely ridiculous, but it harkens to the way B movies were made in the studio years prior to the 1960's.

Where else can you see Kelly in roller skates??? I love Geney Kelly, this guy is amazing, and to see him in a more modern musical with the Olivia - who was every boys dream girl in 1980 - is history in the making. It was one of Gene's last movies, if not his last.  Oliva has never looked better.

The music for this movie musical is just as good as the music for Grease, but because Grease was a better made film  Xanadu  did not have as much impact as Grease, still it is a masterpiece of an album, especially the lush disco influenced tracks by Jeff Lyne, I think it's his best work. Oliva's distinct silky voice works very well with Lynne's lush big sound, oddly enough...

Remember, this is B movie at best, but it's alot of fun, for reasons that personal taste can only address. I like the look of the movie, it's similar to another film of 1980 - Flash Gordon, the same company did the special effects for Xanadu.

[Bowie]

This movie made me want to commit suicide within seconds!!!!

[katmann]

You're all nuts, watched(and I mean WATCHED!) this film more than fourty times.I Love every time. And as for the glowing blue people... the're not blue , the're GREEN...adjust you're TV!

[Squishy]

Trivia: Disney renegade Don Bluth did the animated sequence in "Xanadu" before moving on to better ("The Secret of NIMH") and worse ("Rock-A-Doodle-Doo") things.

I liked ELO, still do. But I never had the required crush on Olivia Newton-John (AKA the good-girl who learns to be a raging slut in "Grease") and, well, where's Michael Beck now? Roller disco? Allan Carr? Ew. Pardon me, I have to spew.

[Renata e Dani Dani]

It's a cruelty to say that this movie isn't. It is SO BAD, it becomes wonderful!!! The glowing people all coming from another planet - which is Greece - the skaters as a way of transportation, it's great, it's social, it's political!!! It's like the traffic solution, you never know how much you need until you get it. Olivia Newton-John is the first Australian who plays a Greek in USA with the coherence of a German in Hawaii. Just loved it! (My friend is still going to watch it, she's concerned about the roller skaters though...)

[Steve]

Wow, your way off base on this film. Though the character of Sonny was miscast, this is a very good musical.
Olivia Newton-John is great, along with Gene Kelly.
The music has stood the test of time as well.

Instead of being labeled a bad film, hopefully one day this film will be appreciated and gain the respect it deserves.

There are numbers of films when first produced were labled "bad" films only to surface in the future, where  new viewers grew to love them. I believe this is such a film.
Certainly in the same class as say Gene Kelly's "Brigadoon",
which has become a classic.

[Kelly]

For my part, it didn't matter what the movie was like - it had Olivia _and_ ELO...  I saw this movie day after day when it came out, & loved it.  Not sure I'd have the nerve to invite anybody over to watch it, though, nowadays.

[Girl]

Xanaduuu.....I hated this movie!!! And the worse: the theme-music plays all the time at my favourite radio station! ARGHTTTTTT (I kind of like the music...hehehe)

[ReesesMonkey]

I have to disagree with you man. Ok i DO agree that it isn't Shakespeare, but, i have loved this movie ever since I can remember. It came out in 80, and i have been watching it since i was 4 years old. I guess the reason i like it personally is because i grew up with it, and when you're little it doesn't take much to dazzle you. Kids can be dazzled or scared by the cheapest of effects, and i guess that is what happened in my case. Xanadu always has had a special place in my heart (Especially for the fact that Olivia Newton John was one of the hottest women of that particular era in my humble opinion). Of course I have been accused before of having weird (read bad) taste in movies before, but oh well. Some movies like that have just stuck with me throughout the years, even when i have gotten older and found out they weren't quite as spectacular as my 4 or 5 year old mind thought they were at the time :)
But when you're young, alot of your impressions from those early times tend to stay with you long into adulthood.

[AlphaWoolf]

Wow.  I had no idea so many people like this movie, much less had even seen it!  Yes, I was in the target audience for this film.  I saw this in the theatre during its release at the ripe old age of 13.  My brother and father skipped this and went to see "Battle Beyond the Stars" while I watched "Xanadu" alone.  They came out disappointed and I came out entranced.  Before even seeing it I was a fan of 1) ELO, 2) Greek mythology, and 3) Gene Kelly (weird kid, huh?), so the "planets aligned, so rare" were all set for me to like this movie.  Throw in OJN (wow!), cool special effects, the Tubes, and a Disney-style interlude and there's no room in my heart to criticize.  It's got Wilfrid Hyde-White as Zeus, for pete's sake!

Still, watching it as an adult I can now recognize that yes, by accepted cinematic standards "Xanadu" is what most people would consider a bad movie.  Micheal Beck is his usual awful, wooden self.  The pacing is a little slow in spots, too.  However, there are so many great musical numbers you don't have to slog far through the plot before you're uplifted by the music.  And the cast does not perform this as camp, so any such connotations viewers may make in this regard come from their own view of the material.

"Xanadu" forms one-half of my "Films other people hate, but I love, made in 1980" collection.  The other movie being "Flash Gordon".  Oh yeah!

Despite the year of its release, "Xanadu" is not really an 80's film.  It's the last hurrah of the disco 1970's.  I think the "Disco is Dead" baggage weighed heavily against this movie at that time.  That's too bad.  This movie is great escapism and one of my favorite films.