11/01/06 Xanadu

Xanadu (1980), directed by Robert Greenwald

watched w/ Leslie; DVD rental (Netflix) @ home

I'm almost embarassed to say that we watched this one...sort of like "From Justin To Kelly" or "High School Musical." The glaring difference here is that we did this one by choice. Perhaps I wanted to punish myself for gorging on too much candy or alcohol over the Halloween weekend...who knows? Maybe I have a sick curiosity to see Olivia Newton-John in leotards (sans her "Let's Get Physical" equipment room motif)...get off my back! Whatever the reason going into the film, I wish I would have listened to my macho tendencies and abandoned the thinking of "oh, c'mon this will be funny to make fun of" mentality before witnessing this catastrophic endeavor. All involved in the making, producing, selling, organizing, starring, publicizing, watching, purchasing, renting, and burning (because that's just harmful to the ozone) of this movie ought to be punished. This film is an atrocity in roller skates. I don't even know where to begin with the Crayola choreographed madness! Olivia plays Kira, a magical muse in roller skates (yes, you heard that right) who happens upon the California beachfront landscape to inspire an angst-ridden struggling artist named Sonny (c'mon, the guys job is to paint larger than life replicas of popular album cover art work for local storefront windows...he's a hack). Sonny doesn't listen to the rules, or his mangy boss, but is angel struck when he sees the wispy vision of Kira go-going in her skates down the boardwalk one day. She leads him to this abandoned building (a dusty murder scene waiting to happen...where actors' careers go to die) where her dance fever turns his thoughts on becoming an entrepreneur. Kira wants Sonny (who I swear had to be in the Bee Gees at some point, but is actually the dude from "The Warriors") to turn this dump into a rockin' disco roller rink (please, don't laugh, it's HIS dream), and enlist the help of washed up showbiz guy Danny Mcguire (actually Gene Kelly in his final screen role...boy, i bet he gets Hell for that one in Heaven!). What we come to realize (whether you care or not) is that Danny too was dumbfounded by the very same muse of Kira some 40 years ago. Both men embark on this hopeless adventure to make some really sad dreams come true. All I have to say is that if lead man Sonny's previous role in "The Warriors" had his new crew of roller-skating muses with pixie dust going up against any one of the street gangs in the first film...let's just say it would be a bloodbath. And no Olivia Newton-John in leotards could save them from a gory demise...but then again, we could just let them die with disco. In conclusion, "Xanadu", Xanadon't see this movie.

1 out of 5 stars