Why’d it Bomb? Xanadu (1980)

https://lebeauleblog.com/2019/06/26/whyd-it-bomb-xanadu-1980/

Kevthewriter goes way back to a musical turkey that is partially responsible for the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards, the ELO-fueled, Olivia Newton John-starring roller disco fiasco, Xanadu.

There are some genres that, if they provide the goods, people will forgive their flaws.

A good example is the Transformers movies. Critics hated them, fans of the original franchise hated the sequels, but the general audience loved it (for a while at least) because they came for robots fighting each other and they got robots fighting each other.

Honestly Michael Bay has made an entire career out of movies that people love because, despite all the flaws everyone has pointed out his movies have, his movies do what they’re promised, a.k.a. have “cool action scenes”.

Action movies are hardly the only example of this. If a comedy’s funny, people will forgive the movie’s other flaws. If a drama makes them sad, ditto. And if musicals have songs they find catchy, it’s not a big deal if the talky scenes aren’t that great. Just look at the success of The Greatest Showman, a movie that had this.

Most people didn’t care that that movie had, among (a ton of) other things, an entire scene where a guy is painted as being sympathetic because he didn’t like people laughing at him only for the movie itself to ask people to laugh at him later on, they just couldn’t stop humming to This is Me. And that’s hardly the only example.

The new My Fair Lady revival got a lot of press because people seemed to agree that, looking back, Eliza Dolittle didn’t really get much agency and this new revival changed that. But throughout the years, people didn’t really care how much agency Dolittle had because, again, they liked the songs. The new Oklahoma revival also got some press for painting the bad guy as a more sympathetic character because, again, some people have pointed out that the character was more sympathetic than the musical originally seemed to realize. This only became an issue now because, let’s all say it, people liked the songs.

And many people agree that the ending in Grease, how Sandy changes herself just to appease Danny and his friends, sends a horrible message. But they were too busy humming “You’re The One That I Want” to think too much about it.

Granted a reason most of those examples I listed weren’t considered big deals back when they came out but are more criticized today are due to changing social attitudes. Still those plays have been performed decades after they came out with little to no alteration, even when the things those shows portray as good isn’t really considered to be in the right by most people. And it’s really because, even though those shows are products of their time, people, well, like the songs too much to care.

But Xanadu, the other Olivia Newton John musical, is an interesting exception to the rule. Xanadu doesn’t really have any problematic messages I can think of. But it had catchy songs, which most people agreed with, as the soundtrack was a hit on the Billboard Hot 100. (Lebeau Note: Thanks, Kev. Now I have the theme song stuck in my head!)

Yet, at the time of its release, people didn’t forgive its flaws. It actually did make its money back but it didn’t make as much as it was expected to. And the movie was so critically reviled it basically ended director Robert Greenwald’s career before it started, as he mostly just directed documentaries and TV movies afterwards, as well as star Michael Beck’s career, something he famously admitted when he said “The Warriors opened a lot of doors for me, which Xanadu then closed”. The movie also killed Film Legend Gene Kelly’s career. Sure he wasn’t doing a whole lot since the late 60’s beforehand but he didn’t do any more movies after it, just a couple miniseries and 2 episodes of The Love Boat.

The only person whose career came out kinda unscathed was Olivia Newton-John, who was given one more chance with Two of a Kind three years later. But then that movie (as well as her battle with breast cancer to be fair) basically killed any chance of her becoming a movie star.

But why is this movie the exception? Why, of all musicals, was this the one where people said “Yeah, we like your songs and all but we don’t like YOU”? Why was this movie, despite making its money back, considered a movie bad enough to kill the careers of most of the main people involved in making it, despite the success of its soundtrack?

I think the problem was the movie was too awful. As in what would happen if Ed Wood made a musical bad. The plot is really incoherent, Michael Beck’s acting is terrible, Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly’s acting is only so much better, the lighting is dull, the special effects are awful even by 1980 standards (remember The Empire Strikes Back came out literally the same year and looks way more advanced), the sets look like they’re made out of cardboard and