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India Press Store - Xanadu
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List Price: $6.98
Our Price: $1.99
Your Save: $ 4.99 ( 71% )
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Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Starring: Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly, Michael Beck, James Sloyan, Dimitra Arliss
Directed By: Robert Greenwald
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786300182325
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 6300182320
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Universal Studios
Release Date: 1994-07-13
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: 1980-08-08
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Eighties Live
Comment: Nice package and very clean contents. The whole family enjoyed the trip down memory lane with the video and the audio cd. I recommend this for a great family popcorn evening.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Buy - Very Satisfied
Comment: This was a gift for my 10 year old daughter and she loves it. It includes the soundtrack and I thought it was a great value.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well, it's got Olivia in it!!
Comment: Let's think of it as a love story between how Liv and Matt met and leave it at that. Great music, though--fun dancing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: For "Xanadu" did Newton-John a roller disco flick decree
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thrown together DVD....like the movie. Music barely saves it.
Comment: This a bizarre and campy piece of trash. Yes, it has great music and is colorful but so is the soundtrack album. It appears the movie was shot in a blind panic to rush it out. The dancing seems badly rehearsed with people bumping into each other, looking at the camera, their feet and appearing like amateurs who are confused about what they are doing. Did anyone explain the so-called story to the dancers and actors? Come to think of it, better they didn't because the story is a mess. Whoever wrote this was paid too much if they were paid over a dollar. They stole the story from an old Rita Hayworth movie and were too lazy to even do that right. I was working as an usher in a cinema at the time Xanadu skated into town (summer of 1980) and vividly remember people leaving the movie early nearly everyday, especially during the cartoon segment of this movie. STILL, I have to admit the music is first-rate and Olivia and Gene Kelly are a pleasure to watch. Michael Beck, well, the less said the better.
As for the DVD, it appears they rushed this out to capitalize on the success of the Broadway show. The cover says the movie has been remastered. Perhaps the sound has but the picture is dirty with scratches, hairs and dirt apparent in any scene not shot in the dark. It seems they put more work (and glitter) into the DVD slipcase than the DVD itself. It has one of the most UNinformative documentaries I have ever sat through. It is about the making of the film but has NONE of the stars (yes, I know Gene is dead), none of the co-stars or musicians except a couple of the members of The Tubes and even those two say they won't sing their one song from the movie ever! The "documentary" doesn't do the film any favors. It gives you the impression of how confused everyone connected with this show was and how it was rushed into production and thrown at the public as we see it today. They are so desperate for material on the documentary they interview a pathetic, chubby "fan" who has worshiped this movie since she was a chubby girl. There is one grainy trailer included. There is a gallery of "rare" photos. Must be about 5 I haven't seen before. Since the producers of this DVD realized they were a bit thin on extras they threw in the plain soundtrack album with nothing new or different on it. Yawn.
I seem to remember some scenes that showed on TV in an extended version in 1982 or so. There was more to the the film with longer scenes of the songs and dancing in the Xanadu roller disco. I may be wrong but I don't think so. Why couldn't they put those deleted scenes on the special features of this DVD? Some people would probably enjoy seeing them. I would have out of curiosity.
Anyway, the main reason Xanadu appeals to me at all is because I have some happy memories of that time in my life. I was 18 and enjoyed watching the film with friends because the effects and music were "cool". Too bad the music and effects were put in the service of a rotten storyline. I still fell sorry for the clueless dancers. It should have been much, much better. Pity.
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Editorial Reviews:
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A wimpy remake of an already anemic movie (the 1947 Rita Hayworth vehicle Down to Earth), this glitzy musical from 1980 improbably stars Olivia Newton-John as a heavenly muse sent here to help open a roller-derby disco. Gene Kelly is mixed up in this well-meaning but goofy effort to fuse nostalgia with late-'70s glitter-ball trendiness, and he looks just plain silly. Directed by Robert Greenwald, the film doesn't even work as decent kitsch. --Tom Keogh
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