Xanadu (film)


Xanadu is a 1980 American musical fantasy film written by Richard Christian Danus and Marc Reid Rubel, and directed by Robert Greenwald. It stars Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck and Gene Kelly in his final film role. The film features music by Newton-John, Electric Light Orchestra, Cliff Richard, and The Tubes.
The title is a reference to the nightclub in the film, which takes its name from Xanadu, the summer capital of Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China. This city appears in Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an 1816 poem that is quoted in the film.
A box office disappointment, Xanadu earned negative critical reviews and was an inspiration for the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards to recognize the worst films of the year. Despite the lackluster performance of the film, the soundtrack album became a huge commercial success around the world, and was certified double platinum in the United States. The song "Magic" was a U.S. number one hit for Newton-John, and the title track reached number one in the United Kingdom and several other countries around the world. The film has since become a cult classic for the way it mixes the storyline from an old-fashioned 1940s fantasy with modern aesthetics featuring late 1970s and early 1980s rock and pop music on the soundtrack as well as for fans of Newton-John.

Plot

Sonny Malone attempts to make a living as a freelance artist but fails, and he returns to his old job of painting album cover reproductions at AirFlo Records. He rips up one of his failed freelance drawings and throws it into the wind, and it hits a mural of the Nine Muses of Olympus and brings them to life. The sisters fly up into the sky, but one of them, Terpsichore, returns to Earth.
Terpsichore proceeds to roller skate through town, and collides with Sonny, leading her to kiss him before skating away. Later, Sonny is tasked with painting the album cover for a group called The Nine Sisters, which shows Terpsichore standing in front of an abandoned art deco auditorium. The cameraman reveals that the woman was not supposed to be on the cover, but suddenly appeared in a few of the shots. Sonny goes to the auditorium and finds Terpsichore, who introduces herself as Kira. The two of them fall in love, though Kira refuses to tell Sonny anything about herself.
Sonny meets and befriends Danny McGuire, a has-been big band orchestra leader turned construction mogul. Danny once had a muse in the 1940's who looked significantly like Kira. Kira encourages Sonny and Danny to open a nightclub at the auditorium, and the two begin working on this project as partners. However, Kira eventually confesses to Sonny that she is a Muse and cannot stay in love with him. Sonny gets upset, and Kira leaves Earth. Danny tells Sonny to keep pursuing Kira, having discovered that Kira was once his Muse and encouraging Sonny not to give up on his ambitions like he did after Kira left him. Sonny manages to enter Kira's home, a forbidden place called Xanadu, by roller skating into the Muses' mural.
Inside the realm of the gods, Kira's father Zeus denies Sonny's plea to let Kira come back to Earth, and despite Kira's mother Mnemosyne interceding for Sonny and Kira, Zeus ultimately sends Sonny back to Earth. Kira then professes her feelings for Sonny, and her parents decide to let her go back to him for "a moment, or maybe forever." Kira and the Muses perform at the grand opening of Sonny and Danny's nightclub Xanadu before returning back to their realm. Sonny is saddened by their departure, but upon seeing a waitress who looks exactly like Kira, he stops her and asks to talk.

Cast

The Muses
Members of the Tubes
The album grouped Olivia Newton-John and ELO's onto separate sides of the album, and some tunes were excluded from the album. The following is the actual order in the film:
The plot of the film Down to Earth was used as the basis for Xanadu. In the film, Rita Hayworth played Terpsichore, and Larry Parks played a producer of stage plays.
Kelly's character Danny McGuire previously appeared in the film Cover Girl.

Production

The film was originally conceived as a relatively low-budget roller disco picture. As a number of prominent performers joined the production, it evolved into a much larger project, while retaining rollerskating as a recurring theme, especially in the final scenes of the club's opening night.
Earlier versions of the story established that Sonny was the artist who created the mural from which the nine goddess sisters emerge. This provided a much stronger explanation for the muses' interest in helping him achieve artistic success. However, continual rewrites and editing during production caused this plot point to be lost, except for one line spoken by Sonny as he laments his failure as a freelance artist; "I paint his van...I paint somebody else's mural...". This plot point was recycled and used in the stage adaptation of the film. The Marvel Comics adaptation published as Marvel Super Special #17 retained the more strongly emphasized connection between Sonny and the painting.
Danny McGuire, who appeared in Cover Girl, also appears in Xanadu. The film was Gene Kelly's final film role, except for compilation films of the That's Entertainment! series. Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent served as choreographers.
The Pan-Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles was used for exterior shots of the nightclub. Xanadu's nightclub interior was built on Stage 4 of the Hollywood Center Studios beginning in 1979. Sonny refers to the Auditorium as "a dump", which was a fair characterization of the Pan-Pacific by then. Danny jokes that "they used to have wrestling here", which was a true statement about the Auditorium. The building would be consumed by fire a decade later.

Reception

Universal cancelled press screenings of Xanadu, suggesting that they were not confident in the film and it went on to receive negative reviews. Variety called it "a stupendously bad film whose only salvage is the music". Roger Ebert gave the film two stars, describing the film as "a mushy and limp musical fantasy" with a confused story, redeemed only by Newton-John's "high spirits" and several strong scenes from Kelly. Moreover, Ebert criticized the choreography, saying "the dance numbers in this movie do not seem to have been conceived for film." He noted that mass dance scenes were not photographed well by cinematographer Victor J. Kemper, who shot at eye level and failed to pick up the larger patterns of dancers, with dancers in the background muddying the movement of the foreground.
With a combination of contemporaneous and modern reviews, Xanadu today holds a "Rotten" rating of 27% from Rotten Tomatoes, based on 41 reviews, and the consensus states "Not even spandex and over-the-top musical numbers can save Xanadu from questionable acting, unimpressive effects, and a story unencumbered by logic." The German television show Die schlechtesten Filme aller Zeiten, in which the hosts Oliver Kalkofe and Peter Rütten present a bad movie in each episode, featured the movie in its third season. Janet Maslin wrote in her review "Like The Wiz...Xanadu is desperately stylish without having any real style."
A double feature of Xanadu and another musical released at about the same time, Can't Stop the Music, inspired John J.B. Wilson to create the Golden Raspberry Awards, an annual event "dishonoring" what is considered the worst in cinema for a given year. Robert Greenwald won the first Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director, and the film was nominated for six other awards.
Over the years, the film has developed something of a cult audience.
While the film was moderately successful, the soundtrack album, was a major hit. It was certified Double Platinum in the US and Gold in the UK, and also spent one week atop the Cashbox and Record World Pop Albums charts. The soundtrack contained five Top 20 singles:
Xanadu was re-released on DVD on June 24, 2008. The "Magical Music Edition" features a "Going Back to Xanadu" featurette, the film's trailer and a photo gallery. A bonus music CD with the soundtrack album was included. The CD was the film's standard soundtrack album, i.e. with no extras such as omitted tracks.
The film was officially released on Blu-ray on March 8, 2016. In addition, it was released in Digital HD for download and streaming.

Stage musical

A $5 million Broadway musical adaptation of the same name began previews on May 23, 2007, and opened on July 10, 2007 starring Kerry Butler as Kira, Cheyenne Jackson as Sonny, and Tony Roberts as Danny. In the musical, Kira is the Muse Clio, not Terpsichore. Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa co-starred as "evil" Muse sisters. The show, which humorously parodied the plot of the film, was a surprise hit, and was nominated for several Tony Awards. The original cast recording was released December 2007. The Broadway production closed on September 28, 2008 after 49 previews and 512 performances. A successful national tour followed.

Awards and nominations