Never let it be said these films don’t aim high for their sources of inspiration. Greek mythology and Coleridge combine in this merry tale of Muses incarnated on Earth to help mankind strive for greater artistic triumphs – which in this case means Olivia Newton John getting Gene Kelly to open a roller disco. Lashings of ELO on the soundtrack and a bit of Don Bluth animation can’t hide the fact this looks like they were making it up as they went along – which, indeed, they were. 1980 turned out to be the high summer of the disco movie – this fought for fleapit space with the delirious Village People ‘biopic’, Can’t Stop the Music. Olivia was no stranger to the wacky world of rock opera – she’d been the singer in made-up band Toomorrow, promoted Monkees-style in the disastrous 1970 sci-fi musical of the same name. Revivalist musicals, eh? From New York, New York through to Absolute Beginners, there was always someone trying to ‘recapture the magic’ of the MGM days back then. We blame Bob Fosse for making it look easy. But this leg-warmered slice of Pacific disco glamp (It’s glam! It’s camp!) is probably the “warning from history” plum of them all.
Lee James Turnock
March 30, 2016 at 3:34 pm
Well… as an old lady apparently said after seeing the interior of the Sistine Chapel, “you can see a lot of work’s gone into it”. The widescreen photography and some of the sets looked nice, at least.
Richardpd
March 2, 2024 at 5:53 pm
A few people have said the soundtrack is the best thing about this film. I’ve not seen it to pass a judgement.
Unlike Grease making Sandy an exchange student, there was no excuse for ONJ’s inexplicable Australian accent!
Both this & Can’t Stop the Music flopped badly in the USA where disco crashed badly at the end of the 70s, but here it gradually faded away so slowly that Zoom by Fat Larry’s Band was in the charts when the Ford Sierra was launched! Disco lasted even longer in mainland Europe with the Dutch & Italians clinging on into the middle of the decade, hence Mai Tai’s disco-y History in early 1985!
Sidney Balmoral James
March 3, 2024 at 9:00 am
As someone who has seen this, it isn’t really as bad as you might think – it is very cheesy, but it is quite nicely done, and does win points for trying to cover several musical bases and to be frank, most films celebrating the music of the time age horribly (e.g. the Girl Can’t Help It, Summer Holiday – even Help, although A Hard Day’s Night remains as fresh as paint). Has some clever ideas (e.g. a swing band and the Tubes playing separate songs simultaneously which gradually merge). Can’t Stop the Music is also not as bad as its reputation might imply, although one of a number of films which did for poor Valerie Perrine’s career (can’t think of more talented and frankly luscious actress, so badly served – perhaps only Paula Prentiss?)
Richardpd
March 3, 2024 at 12:31 pm
I’ll have to add it to my ever long “watch it one day” list.
I agree music based films can be tricky to get right, as there’s so much to go wrong.