In these stressful days, it can be nice to sit back and lose ourselves in the escapist marvels of cinema. Of course, what constitutes escapism varies from person to person. Some love the bloodlust of gory pictures while others revel in good midcentury melodrama. Whatever your poison of choice is, now seems like a good time to indulge. For me, one surefire way of dispelling the doom and gloom of day-to-day life is to bathe in the glamour of movie musicals. Other prime sources of stress-relief are those movies which are so terrible, so unbelievably miscalculated, that their turpitude becomes entertaining. The logical conclusion is that there's no greater joy than watching a movie musical that's so bad it's good.
Well, that's precisely what I did one monotonous afternoon, trading in the frustrations of reality for the disco disaster fabulousness of Xanadu…
How do you go about describing, let alone explaining, something as odd as Xanadu? I can't say I know the answer, but let's try to start by doing some plot summarization. This 1980 calamity inspired by the disco craze of the late 70s revolves around two central figures, an artist and his muse. Such archetypes of ancient times that are here given a neon tinted makeover for the last days of disco. Our artist is Sonny Malone, an improbably named painter of middling talent who devotes his days to creating sized-up versions of album covers. The muse, on the other hand, is an Aussie accented Olympian deity that goes by many names. In this tale, she's mostly known as Kira.
One day, after having teleported out of a chintzy mural, Kira goes on a roller-skating sojourn and bumps into Sonny, forever changing his life. He becomes obsessed with finding where that mysterious blonde comes from and ends up crossing paths with another one of Kira's admirers. He's Gene Kelly playing an old geezer who was once part of a big band orchestra but ended up becoming a construction mogul after losing contact with his muse. The name of this elderly fellow is Danny McGuire, though it's not clear if he's supposed to be the same Danny McGuire Kelly portrayed in 1944's Cover Girl alongside Rita Hayworth.
Funnily enough, that's not the only Hayworth-starring musical that may be connected to Xanadu. 1947's Down to Earth comes to mind, for it tells a similar story of the muse Terpsichore coming down to the realm of mortals to inspire and fall in love with an artist. In that classic, there's a pointed tension between art and commerce, between the need for erudite elucidation and popular entertainment. Xanadu features a similar dynamic, though it's less complicated and its conclusions. In this disco inferno, there's a battle being fought between old school music and modern rock, with Danny and Sonny quarreling over them.
Well, "quarrel" might be an excessive expression, since that would require actor Michael Beck to be a bit livelier than a plank of wood and such wonders seem to be far beyond his talents. Instead, Danny and Sonny debate the matter in tepid conversation and let their tastes fuse into an unholy abomination - a roller disco by the name of Xanadu. In one of the movie's campiest moments, this is illustrated by having dueling musical numbers, caricatures of the styles in the discussion, slowly converge in a lycra-clad cacophony. It sounds like a fun idea, but it goes on for too long and the lensing of the thing is far beneath any notion of basic filmmaking aptitude.
Around half of the numbers are like that. There's an abundance of unimpressive studio sets and misused wide shots, arrhythmic editing, and bland lip-syncing making musical interludes feel like stodgy bores. The other half, however, makes up for its lack of technical virtuosity with bat-shit insanity. Seeing Gene Kelly roller-skating while wearing a mountain of fringe and then be multiplied by kaleidoscopic split screens isn't something I knew I needed, but Xanadu was kind enough to provide me with it. The same can be said about Olivia Newton-John as Kira turning into animated zoology during a love song. And then there's the finale, an explosion of camp nonsense that seems to be aiming for classic Busby Berkeley style but ends up being a hilariously excessive bit of kitsch instead.
It's ridiculous and beyond bad, but it's also one hell of a ride full of entertainment that comes in many forms, both intentional and otherwise. For instance, for all my grumblings, the soundtrack, overall, is a bop. The fits of incredulous laughter the thing provoked were probably not what the filmmakers intended to produce, but they are enjoyable nonetheless. A kind of self-serious earnestness and sentimental sincerity pervades the whole thing, making it easy to ridicule the movie and to understand how it has generated a cult following in the decades since it so famously flopped. This is one loveable cinematic monstrosity. While I mourn the fact that Gene Kelly ended his movie career with such a lethargic mess, I'm happy I gave my time to Xanadu and its unashamed lunacy.
This endearing calamity which helped nail the coffin of disco is newly available on HBO Now.
Related
Other posts about Xanadu (1980)
More in our "How Had I Never Seen" series