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In Xanadu Did Universal A Special Edition DVD Decree

June 4, 2008

Any DVD supplemental featurette for the movie Xanadu that doesn’t at least mention the infamous Esquire Magazine review of the 1980 musical fantasy—“In a word--Xana-Don’t”—just wouldn’t be doing justice to this strangely loved and frequently loathed production. Universal is re-issuing a ‘Magical Musical Edition’ of the candy-colored confection on June 24. It comes packaged with the complete soundtrack by the Electric Light Orchestra and others—all the better to cash in on the popularity that the Tony-nominated Broadway musical based on the film is currently enjoying.

The half-hour featurette, directed by Jonathan Gaines, is a good one (better than the feature film, perhaps?), and it presents no less than a dozen of the film’s enthusiastic collaborators as talking heads. Among the guilty are producer Lawrence Gordon, choerographer Kenny Ortega, animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (who created that adorable pre-Little Mermaid lovesick fish sequence set to ELO’s sweeping “Don’t Walk

Away”), costume designer Bobbie Mannix, featured dancers Sandahl Bergman and Marilyn Tokuda (who points out her one word of spoken dialogue in the film--a demurely delivered ‘Sure.’), Eighties rockers Fee Waybill and Michael Colton of The Tubes, co-star Gene Kelly’s widow Patricia and, finally, director Robert Greenwald.

 

Greenwald--who’s best know for recently producing and directing the impassioned agitprop documentaries Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War (2003), Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004) and Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005)--acknowledges that Xanadu, his first Hollywood feature, didn’t do much to further his commercial filimmaking career. And it’s ‘Greenwald The Documentarian’ who best sums up the Day-Glo look and feel of his $20 million movie:

 

“It was not a film rooted in a kind of Paddy Chayefsky realism, I think it’s safe to say,” Greenwald grins.

 

My big question is where oh where in the featurette are Xanadu stars Olivia Newton-John and Michael “The Warriors” Beck and Electric Light Orchestra head honcho Jeff Lynne? Perhaps they were tied up when Universal came a-knockin'.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Laurence Lerman on June 4, 2008 | Comments (7)