Craptacular Classic of the Week!!!

Xanadu.
Oh yes, I've heard the various legends and myths of such a place.
But who in their right mind ever thought this was the right way to put it on screen?
Even though it was named differently, Lost Horizon featured a neat paradise,
one I wouldn't mind hanging out in. But this?
Let me backtrack.
Imagine you're a Hollywood producer and it's 1980.
"Hey, Charlie, we need a new idea. We gotta make a hit."
"Well, slashers are hot now, but I don't think they'll last. I think a musical could be big."
"You're right! We did that white kids in a disco thing for Saturday Night Fever,
with John Travolta, and it was HUGE!"
"Yeah, and we did the black kids in a disco thing with Donna Summer,
and that sold real good!"
"Don't forget the 50's revival with Grease and John Travolta
and Olivia Newton John, major moneymaker!!"

(note, these gentleman are obviously oblivious to the steaming pile
known as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band? Now back to our geniuses.)

"Hey, I GOT IT! A magical roller disco with Olivia Newton John AND Gene Kelley!!
Whaddaya say?"
"Sid, you're a GENIUS!!!"
Now if someone had beaten these gentlemen with a tire chain, before going
on to finish the job with a monkey wrench, the world could have been spared
the retina burning sights of this flick.
I won't go into the horribly silly plot (She's a muse, and he's an artist...who wants to build a roller disco?),
but we'll start with the whole concept: It was 1980!!!! Disco was DEAD.
Kaput.
There was this stuff called punk.
Way cooler than disco.
But our geniuses had an ace up their sleeves!
The SOUNDTRACK!
They took the effort to hire Jeff Lynne and ELO to write it.
Too bad Jeff and Co. were already yesterday's news.
The Last Train From Bloatsville.
Competent, but miles away from being cool.
Did they consider that Olivia's voice was ill suited to their music?
Nah, as long as the check was good.
So we have an epic bloated soundtrack, to go with a movie
that started filming without a finished script.
I'm serious.
Ask Olivia Newton John.
Written as they went.
We got a 40's dance sequence with Gene Kelley that meant nothing.
We got Olivia rollerskating around the beach boardwalk for no reason.
(yeah, mystical muses do that all the time I think)
We got costumes that can still send epileptic children into seizures.
We got huge sets, a million dancers, singers, jugglers, roller skaters, etc.
And it made zero sense.
And it made zero cents.
Flopperoonie!
So it disappeared into the dustbin of history.
Good riddance.
But I picked up the ELO Box Set (yeah, they're still pretty good musicians, not as cool as they once were, but hey)
It had their version of Xanadu on it.
It's a pretty good pop song.
It got me thinking, was it REALLY that bad of a movie?
So I found it at Scarecrow Video.
Oh dear god, it's every bit as horrible as I remembered.
And I noticed things the kid in me never did.
Like Olivia can't dance to save her life.
(I never noticed that when I lusted after her then)
Ginger Rogers coulda mopped up the floor with her.
Gene Kelley looked really old in it.
The FX are horribly dated.
Even for 1980, I mean.
Wretched, wretched, wretched.
It's...
A THREE FLUSHER!!

It woulda been four, but damn, Olivia sure was a cutie back then.