![]() That she is able to sing, dance and skate with some ease is a pleasant albeit limited surprise. At her virginally pretty peak, the florescent-lighted Olivia Newton-John plays Kira in the same wide-eyed manner she displayed as Sandy in "Grease". If that doesn't sound preposterous enough, the cardboard dialogue, overdone Vegas-style sets and cheesy special effects compound the absurdities exponentially. Together, they decide to take the dilapidated, art-deco Pan Pacific Auditorium and turn it into a roller disco club called Xanadu. She inspires Sonny to partner with Danny McGuire, a wealthy eccentric whom she may have inspired when he was a big band clarinetist with his own supper club in New York 35 years earlier. ![]() He is visited by Kira, one of nine muses from ancient Greece, who come to life from a Venice Beach wall mural (set amusingly to ELO's "I'm Alive"). A mishmash of surreal, forehead-slapping elements that never really congeal, the 1980 movie's fanciful storyline centers on Sonny Malone, a struggling LA commercial artist tired of recreating album covers on canvas for a record company. On the other, you have to celebrate the fact that it is indeed unique and that we will never see a musical fantasy extravaganza as bizarrely conceived again.hopefully. On one hand, "Xanadu" is like passing by a car accident.you can't help but stare. What surprises me even more is how in its sheer, misguided exuberance one can just giggle at the studio mindset that came up with the hilariously awful concept and resulting production. I was amazed to discover that the director of this legendary fiasco is the same Robert Greenwald who would go on to make several shrewdly observed documentaries nearly a quarter century later - "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism", "Uncovered: The War on Iraq", "Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties".
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