Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello my friends and welcome back to Movie Deputy Reviews. Sorry about that. Just realized my microphone's visible. Fix that. So sorry about the weird sound you heard there.
Welcome back. If you are surprised by the title on today's program, I hope you're not too surprised because we are going into a complete blast from the past. I watched this movie just recently again for the first time in quite a few years. But I remember having such fond memories of watching this one year ago. And you may be wondering, what movie is this? I don't even know how to pronounce that.
The movie is called Xanadu. It is from 1980. Yes, I'm that old. I was just six years old when this movie came out. But this is the iconic Olivia Newton John, the iconic Gene Kelly in roles that you've likely never quite imagined them being.
In this one, Olivia is a Greek muse and she is sent to earth to inspire someone and it ends up turning into a musical slash love story.
But don't be too quick to judge. I mean, we get the old school big band era music. You get the electric light orchestra. You get everything from not full on classical, but probably like I said, the big band era all the way up through the 80s rock. And so you get just a really mixed bag of the music throughout those eras in this. And you get to see it along with a lot of roller skating and just a lot of fun and visual effects as this goes on too.
But before we jump into too much with the movie, I want to show you the trailer. But I'm going to warn you ahead of time, this movie is from 1980. The trailer is grainy. It. The, the trailer is. I was looking all over. I'm really surprised there's not a high definition trailer available for a movie like this. But I did the best I finding a trailer for this. And this will kind of give you a little bit of an idea of the movie. So let's jump over and check that out.
Like I said, it's bad. I invite you to come over here to check out our YouTube channel to check this out.
You'll be glad you did.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Open your eyes and hear the magic.
Universal Pictures announces the most dazzling romantic musical fantasy in years.
Xanadu.
Starring Olivia Newton John, Michael Beck.
And gene kelly.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Whenever you're away from me Wherever you go you're never far away from me la I won't take a back seat tonight Ooh, lover getting on with your feet tonight Xanadu.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: It's a love story about a boy and girl from two very different worlds whom no one can keep apart.
It's a spectacular entertainment that will transport you beyond your dreams.
Xanadu. Where time stops and the magic never ends. Xanadu.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: But that's what I mean, it's really grainy. The audio is awesome. The songs are awesome. What is with this eyebrow today?
Do you ever have your eyebrows just kind of going haywire some days and you just can't get a hold of them, but you kind of got a little bit of an idea of what to expect there. Like I said, Olivia is a Greek muse who come. Who is.
She lives in a mural. And they, all the different muses take turns coming to Earth helping different people and inspiring them. Well, when she comes to Earth to help Sunny to come up with some new ideas, he designed, he does this big thing with like. He'll take like a record, the. The image on the record and turn it into a big poster, but he wants to do more and she inspires him to do more. And in the process, they fall in love. Yes, this is a sappy love story. Yes, this is a musical. Yes, this is just. It's cheesy. I mean, full on. Just bring your crack with you because this. It's that cheesy all the way through it.
But when it's time for her to return home, she wants to stay with Sunny. Sonny wants to. Sunny wants her to stay. And so he appeals to Zeus, her dad.
And unfortunately, that does not go quite as you would think because it. The ending that happens here is not necessarily the traditional, oh, happy ending love story. La dee da dee da. No, this one has a lot more to it than.
But it is. It's. I would. I want to call it an adventure, but it's not really an adventure. It's a silly love story.
It's a musical. It's. It's a lot of fun to watch.
Now here's a little tidbit of information that a lot of people may not know. During the filming of Xanadu, Olivia on roller skates fell backwards and broke her tailbone, which ended up delaying filming by a few weeks while she was in recovery on that, because a lot of this movie is on roller skates. And obviously she took a fall during one of those enough that she broke her tailbone. So a lot of people don't realize that that happened during this. So that was just kind of a little. When I was looking up stuff for Xanadu, I can came across that a bit.
But yeah, this one, if you are nostalgic, if you love musicals, if you like Olivia Newton John, if you are more traditionalist and you want some of the older ones, maybe sit back and watch this again for the first time. Or if you've never even seen or heard of this and you like musicals, definitely check it. It's. It's a fun one. It. It's definitely not what you might expect. Let me go back to my notes here. Like I said, I really just rewatched this and just reviewed this recently, so I got to get to my notes.
You ever do that inside your own head as you're trying to think of movies and stuff to watch?
Okay, I didn't watch it that long ago. There it is.
There's all the notes that I took during Xanadu, and I was just trying to go through, see if I forgot any of the quotes.
This is. Well, one of the big things is sometimes the best thing. Best person to tell things to is a stranger because, I mean, they don't know who you are for Adam. They're. They're gonna probably forget your name two minutes after you walk by. And so sometimes it's easier to just open up and tell them something. Are you one of those people that strangers open up to and talk to, or are you one of the people that opens up and talks to strangers?
Well, Sunny and Kira are very. Two people very much like that.
It's just. It's ready. Made in the nick of time, and it's. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree where Alf, the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.
That is an old quote of Xanadu, and it is said in the movie as well.
And there's just something. Kissed by a muse and I'll love you forever. Kind of give you the tone of the movie here just a little bit. Like I said, it's a lot of fun. It's. It's one that you could just sit back and smile. There's not a whole lot of movies like that nowadays anymore that you could just sit back and enjoy and smile while you're watching or listening to what's going on. Now, like I said, the visuals in this are just stunning as well. And there's a. There's a big piece to the story that I'm leaving out. If you're familiar with Zen, do you know what I'm talking about? But I can't give it away or it would be a big spoiler. Now, the poster here does show a little bit of what I'm Hinting to, but not a whole lot. Now I could. The original Xanadu poster has Olivia with like this weird hair thing going on and I'm just like I am not using that as my podcast image. So I went and I found this. It was the Blu Ray re release of Xanadu in the poster.
So what I did for the podcast on this one is I did this to it as I just squared it off. I didn't make any modifications or anything to it. I just simply squared off the image. So pretty simple there.
Now you may be wondering what I'm giving Xanadu. Well, I'm giving this an innocent rating if that. I don't think that would surprise anybody. There's nothing inappropriate here. There's no, there's no absurdly a strong language and there's no violence or anything like that and nothing. No nudity.
So anything like that. Anyway, I think some of the costumes are a little bit risque, but that was the 80s. So compared to nowadays it's honestly mild.
But score wise, you may be wondering where I'm coming in at this. Now, as much as I recognize that this is a classic for a lot of different reasons, there's also a lot of things in here that are just like where you're just shaking your head like oh come on.
But it's a fantasy. It's supposed to be entertaining. It's not supposed to be a heavy story or anything like that. But there's, there's messages here throughout that make it a little bit better than what you might think. So the score I'm giving Xanadu, this might surprise a few of you. I'm giving it a 6 out of 10 on the Deputy scale.
Now. It's good. It's definitely memorable. There's definitely some flaws.
It's just, it's a fun one to sit down and watch or re watch for the first time or just watch for the first time.
And if you do let feel free to reach out to me. Reach out to me. Let me know what you thought of Xanadu and I would love to hear about it. Who knows, if I get enough responses, I might make a throwback and kind of share some of the songs and stuff that were in the movie as well if we get enough interaction.
So as always, if you haven't done so already, please click the subscribe button and turn on that notification bell to get the latest and the greatest movie Deputy episodes. And as always, I will be back again soon with another movie for you. Will it be an old one? Will it be a new one? You'll have to wait and see. Bye. Bye.
