Sonny Malone (Michael Beck, taking a part The Bee Gees’ Andy Gibb turned down) tears up his latest drawing and throws the pieces out the window. “Aw what the hell. Guys like me shouldn’t dream anyway,” he sighs. The pieces float past a wall in Santa Monica and bring to life nine muses outlined in purple neon, including Kira (Olivia Newton-John) to sing, dance and inspire.

Sonny reports to his job at AirFlo Records, where he paints large versions of album covers to hang in shop windows. He longs to be taken seriously as an artist. Handed the new album by The Nine Sisters, Sonny recognizes the model on the cover. “I run into this girl this morning, never saw her before in my life. She kisses me and disappears.” His co-worker doesn’t see what’s so weird about this. Dude, it’s L.A.

Taking off to search for the mystery girl, Sonny encounters Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly, singing, dancing and acting in his final film). Danny was a Big Band musician, but retired when his lead singer – who bares an uncanny resemblance to Kira – disappeared. Now he hangs out on the beach playing the clarinet and longs to open a nightclub, if he could only be inspired …

With Kira’s help, Sonny and Danny build a roller disco called Xanadu. Kira and Sonny fall in love, a clear violation of the muse rules. Kira is zapped back to Mount Halycon. Sonny skates through a wall to get her back and finds himself in the realm of the gods, which looks like a disco with the lights turned off. Impressed with Sonny’s rollerskating skills, the gods allow Kira to return to earth to open the club.

Directed by Robert Greenwald and produced by Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver, Xanadu is widely considered a bomb, even though it made back its $20 million budget at the box office and the soundtrack album – featuring five songs by Electric Light Orchestra and five performed by Olivia Newton-John ‘ was a huge seller.

Critics dropped the movie like a bad habit, with Daily Variety declaring Newton-John played a “rollerskating lightbulb.” The movie was half of a double bill with Can’t Stop The Music in 1980 and inspired the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards that year. Greenwald was cited Worst Director at the inaugural awards ceremony, though he’s gone on to a prolific career as a documentary filmmaker.

Expecting one of the worst movies ever made, I was disappointed in Xanadu. It’s far from a guilty pleasure; “pleasure” doesn’t enter into the viewing experience. But the movie isn’t awful either. Imagine heckling a kids’ puppet show. It’s bad, sure, but it’s so innocently naïve in its badness, you can’t hate it. You might actually applaud it.

Olivia Newton-John can’t act and she can’t dance, but if she’d come along 20 years earlier and been allowed to sing her dialogue in musical after musical, she would have had a long career. At least two of her songs – “Magic” and “Suspended In Time” – are actually good, with the latter performed in a continuous 2 ½ minute take by the pop singer. It’s the best thing in the movie.

It is kind of sad to see Gene Kelly go out as a sidekick in a roller boogie picture, and poor Michael Beck likely regrets skating through this silliness after starring in The Warriors, but it’s impossible not to notice the influence this movie had. The entire marketing campaign for Skittles seems to be based on this film. Maybe I’m more in touch with my inner 10-year-old girl than I should be, but this one wasn’t that bad.