Xanadu

Saw Xanadu, a disco musical which is certainly spectacular but also very facile and queasily dream-struck. It feels very enthusiastic but overwrought and kind of calculating. Also, this may be incorrect but it felt very gay to me as well (I know, right. A disco musical feels somehow gay? Preposterous!) It stars some dude as an artist lacking in amusement. So he teams up with Gene Kelly and opens a roller-disco with the help of a mysterious woman who may or may not be one of the nine muses (but is pretty obviously definitely a muse.) The muse and the dude fall in love, providing various "magical" sequences which span from actually delightful (the animated sequence) to queasy and freaky (Gene Kelly's horrible makeover montage.)

The bits between the fabulous dance numbers are almost entirely limp. Only Gene can act of the three of them so the other two just provide connective-tissue performances, mouthing words until they get to sing and dance and be just generally attractive again. I feel kind of cruel knocking this film because it's clearly trying to be whimsical and free-spirited and so forth. such films rely on us suspending our powers of disbelief and asks us to throw off our jaded cynicism for a while. I understand movies that are swooning and ethereal, but this one just feels so artificial to me (and not the good kind of magic-show artificial.) As an example, we frequently see dancers who are unaware that their faces are on camera. They energetically twirl and gesticulate, but their faces remain robotically blank. What should be a fun explosion of colour and movement feels flat, controlled, and creepy.

Anyway, it has its moments (the animated scene is really, truly fun and the half-animated Mount Olympus was good too) but on the whole I think I'm more laughing at it than with it and cringing more often than I feel comfortable.