What drugs were they on when they made this disaster?<br /><br />XANADU is one of the worst films ever made. I shouldn't even be calling it a film because there's not much of anything resembling a story, acting, quality, whatever, to be seen in a single frame of this embarrassing disaster. OK, the animated sequence was cool. But that's about it.<br /><br />And calling it a musical is also a put-down on the whole musical genre. XANADU is more of a series of incongruous elements and ideas the director and producers thought up (most likely while on drugs) and were haphazardly stitched together with no idea of what constitutes good storytelling in a musical format.<br /><br />The whole "film" is totally wonky.<br /><br />Case in point: the fact that Olivia Newton John rarely sings on screen, even though this is a musical and we hear songs sung by Olivia and yet Olivia is probably seen performing her songs just a couple of times on screen.<br /><br />Imagine hiring Julie Andrews for a musical, for something like THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and have her sing most of the songs but never show her perform her songs on screen.<br /><br />XANADU starts with the muses appearing from the painting, all dancing and smiling to "I'm Alive", sung by...ELO?!?! Wait a minute. Wouldn't it have made more sense if Olivia had sung "I'm Alive" as she comes to life and dances about? I mean, this is a musical, right? And Olivia can sing, right? But no, we watch a silent ONJ try to dance with the other clunky muses while we hear the ELO song. This annoying "technique" or "style" (don't know what to call it) is repeated a couple of times during the "film", including the whole "All over the world" moment: we watch Olivia grinning and silent while ELO sings.<br /><br />Then there's the whole 1940s - glam rock melding scene, when we actually hear Olivia's voice on the soundtrack during the 1940s scenes but then, whoa, Olivia is nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have these 3 unknown women who stand-in and lipsync to Olivia's voice. Why? That's Olivia's voice I hear, so why not use her on screen?<br /><br />The whole "Suddenly" moment, when Olivia and Michael rollerskate inside the "magical" studio. We basically watch these lifeless people rollerskate in some really cheesy setting while Suddenly, sung by Olivia and Cliff Richards, is heard on the soundtrack. Why? Why not have the couple perform the song to themselves? Just watching two people rollerskate to a song is like being on a porch and watch two people rollerskate in the street while Suddenly plays on the radio. How uninvolving is that?<br /><br />And the whole ending, when Olivia sings on screen (which makes you go "wow, it's a musical now") but it's just a medley of pointless tunes sandwiched in between a truncated version of the song Xanadu. Huh?<br /><br />But the stupidest aspect of this "musical" is that Magic, the best song of the whole disastrous project, doesn't even figure prominently in the film.<br /><br />I could go on and on about how bad this "film" is (bad fx, annoying transitions, ultra kitschy fashions, even for that time, etc) but I think I've made my point of how truly embarrassing the whole thingamajig is by having a popular singer like ONJ in a musical and rarely have her sing on screen. <br /><br />So, in closing, should everyone avoid watching XANADU? Not if you're into train wrecks. It's a must see for those who love watching train wrecks, and boy, this one of the biggest train wrecks ever made. It's sorta "so good because it's so bad" because of its bad fashion sense and the overall look of it but the actors are so boring and lifeless that XANADU doesn't fall into the quotable campy "bad" films. XANADU's true camp appeal resides mainly on its wonky technical aspects (songs, script, continuity, logic, etc) and is a treasure throve of badness that will keep on giving for all eternity.