Olivia Newton-John

  • The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020)

    The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) You have to have some sympathy for entertainers who, after a lifetime of hard work, personal development and multiple projects, still end up recognized for one single thing. Paul Hogan may have had quite a varied career in Australia, but his North American legacy will forever remain playing “Crocodile” Dundee, and so The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee ends up being a meta-Hollywood comedy that sees the 80-year-old wrestle with his unescapable legacy. Hogan was old back in 2001 with the third Dundee film — he’s even older here and looks like it. Perhaps the film’s best moments are allowing a few fellow senior citizen comedians to poke fun at the passing of fame by playing “themselves” — John Cleese shows up as a maniacal ride-share driver to make ends meet; Chevy Chase as an egomaniac; Wayne Knight as a tap-dancing singer; and Olivia Newton-John as something like window dressing. Hogan’s character himself is quite unlike his own best-known character — mild, gaffe-prone, and trying to retire peacefully even as others try to bring him back, often speaking from a position of ignorance. Much of the film’s structure is cyclical, with Hogan exploring the world of 2021 and committing a series of faux pas that land him on the news as the worst person ever. That gets old quickly (especially when the gags are stretched-out and not all that funny in the first place), even as other moments in the film work relatively well. I did like Cleese’s role and some of the comical flourishes poking fun at modern Hollywood. This being said, there is something a bit awkward about a film built around an older man’s lack of comfort in the world — a film about retirement in which Hogan shows up with his first starring role in a decade. I smirked a few times at The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee and it ranks as one of the weirdest legacy sequels so far, so it’s not all that bad — but there are plenty of missed opportunities along the way for a more incisive take on aging stars and whether they should retire once and for all.

  • Xanadu (1980)

    Xanadu (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) There is an infamous place in movie history for Xanadu, often disregarded as one of the worst musicals of all time. That’s an exaggeration, but there’s no denying that Xanadu remains a strikingly weird experience to undergo. Updating a 1940s film plot to the disco era, this is an attempt to make a musical focused on roller-skates, disco and pinball machines. It stars no less an unlikely couple as Olivia Newton-John and legend Gene Kelly in his last feature-film role. (They do share a scene and a few dance moves.) The plot is near-incomprehensible for reasons best explained by a chaotic production process that left dangling a few narrative threads of earlier script drafts. The result is immediately recognizable at being from 1980 (plus or minus two years), far more dated than the earlier musicals that inspired it. The staging isn’t particularly inspired, but the music—wow, the music! Olivia Newton-John and her signature disco sound don’t do much for me, but the other half of the soundtrack is from Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra, and those remain timeless songs. (Indeed, at least three of them made for the movie have gone on to become minor ELO hits.) There is something this close to delirium watching Gene Kelly in circa-1980 montages, trying out clothing and being subject to the blunt optical effects of the era. The film was cutting edge then and is now highly stylized in its use of disco visual references. Up to a certain level, Xanadu escapes mere considerations of being good or bad—it’s an experience, and I can now proudly say that I have seen it.