This big-budget bubble-gum musical is appalling but compulsively watchable; it’s the perfect crystallization of a 13-year-old girl’s taste, circa 1980, complete with roller discos, dreamy boys, fashion shows, and fantasy father figures. Director Robert Greenwald has a lot of ideas, all of them bad: his style could be described as rapid misfire. The cinematography, by Victor Kemper, is the worst imaginable in a film of this cost, while the score, by Jeff Lynne and the Electric Light Orchestra, is damnably catchy—it sticks in your head like a maggot. With Olivia Newton-John, Michael Beck, and Gene Kelly.
Xanadu
1 hour 33 min