danger ranger 2008-12-13
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
This is an irony-free review of Xanadu: Magical Music Edition. If you want a wink-wink assessment, there's no shortage around here or elsewhere.
Xanadu is a movie I vaguely remember from when my parents briefly had one of those ginormous satellite-TV dishes in the early 1980s and you could watch any of the pay channels for free because nobody had bothered to scramble the signals yet. Having seen Xanadu chopped up on commercial TV a few years ago, I decided to wait for a decent DVD edition to come out, which it finally did in 2008.
The movie itself is one I'm not ashamed to admit I like. No, it's not the best movie musical ever made--that would be another Gene Kelly movie, Singin' in the Rain--but for 1980, far removed from the golden age of the movie musical, it's a decent attempt to ape the idiom. While occasionally cringe inducing, the musical numbers are generally well done, and a generation raised on the High School Musical franchise may enjoy discovering that Kenny Ortega had a career before those films. The finale, though not as well shot as it might be (as the commentators in the on-disc documentary point out), is a fabulous bit of glitz that straddles the 70s/80s divide nicely. The songs are universally good, and listening to them on the soundtrack included with this DVD edition will remind you of how well they work as pieces of music (even "Dancin'," which seems like it should be an absolute disaster without the visuals). Kelly is a warm, comforting presence at the center of the movie, and if his pipes had grown a bit rusty (as evidenced in "Whenever You're Away from Me") and his step slowed marginally, he's a great asset to the film. As is Olivia Newton-John, whose singing is a pleasing mixture of sweet ("Suddenly"), vulnerable ("Suspended in Time"), and vibrant ("Magic," "Xanadu"). ELO's contributions are top-drawer also, with "The Fall," "Don't Walk Away," and "Xanadu" being personal favorites.
More than many, this movie is a product of its time. It's dated, garish, and even for 1980 must've been more than a bit corny. Newton-John isn't quite the actress that she is a singer, but Michael Beck is the bigger dramatic liability here. Admittedly, he's forced into some terrible scenes and given some wretched lines to utter (any scene involving him and his coworkers or boss is, at best, stagey), but he's something of an emotional dead zone at the heart of what's supposed to be a romantic comedy. I gather he's still bitter about the film, but I can't imagine with as flat an affect as he has here that he would've been the next Olivier but for Xanadu.
Even for 1980, the effects in Xanadu look pretty cheap and uninspired, unequal to the task of conveying the story of a man who falls in love with a supernatural being. The Bluth animation sequence in the middle of the film has also often been derided as embarrassing and pointless, but it has a certain integrity and charm and is really no more out of place in a fantasy than is, say, roller disco.
Still and all, Xanadu is a fun, brief (93-minute) fling of a movie that you can meet one night after a couple drinks and not feel too bad about in the morning. This DVD edition has good sound and a true widescreen picture. Though not including the principal actors (but including Kelly's widow), the new 30-minute retrospective featurette is also well worth watching, offering a fairly evenhanded assessment of the film as well as some entertaining insights from choreographer Ortega, whom Kelly took under his wing on the set. This disc also includes (on a separate CD, unfortunately not in a separate case) the motion picture soundtrack, which alone justifies the cost of the set.
