music&movieguy

Xanadu, the poorly received 1980 movie musical that was a remake of the 1947 movie musical Down to Earth (itself part of a long tradition of goddess-meets-modern-mortals stories that includes such Broadway musicals-turned-movies as I Married an Angel and One Touch of Venus), remains memorable for only one thing: its soundtrack. The album that accompanied the film sold two million copies and spawned five Top 40 hits for hapless star Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra. (The songwriting was split between Newton-John's personal composer John Farrar and ELO's Jeff Lynne.) Bad as the movie may have been, the music probably was what made it seem a bankable prospect for stage adaptation, especially considering that among the four songs interpolated into the score are three more old ELO and Newton-John hits, "Evil Woman," "Strange Magic," and "Have You Never Been Mellow." The producers of the show seem to have been aiming at the approach that made Mamma Mia! a hit, that sort of guilty pleasure aspect of people's helpless enjoyment of the pop music of their adolescence, mixed with a bit of the send-up quality of, say, The Rocky Horror Show.