STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER: A Bad Movie I’ve Watched Many, Many, MANY Times

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Of all the Star Trek movies, The Final Frontier, the fifth and penultimate of the original crew movies, has a very special level of infamy.  It’s definitely considered one of the bad ones, but it doesn’t have the grandeur of The Motion Picture to excuse it, or the blandness of Insurrection to ignore it, or even the utterly garbled black-hearted mess of Nemesis to vilify it.

Because, say what you will of The Final Frontier—and I will—but its heart is more or less in the right place.  Like an old dog that stumbles around, half-blind and randomly peeing everywhere, there’s really nothing good about it, but at the same time you kind of love it out of habit.

This movie also represents William Shatner’s one and only time in the director’s chair.  I can only imagine that, with Nimoy having directed the last two, he figured he was due for his shot.  I don’t know.  Clearly, it was a bad idea, though the aspect of the film you can see it in the most is the acting.  The Enterprise Seven all do fine, of course.  They wear their characters like comfy sweaters at this point, so it’s pretty hard for them to screw it up.  And seasoned professionals like David Warner as the Federation Ambassador to Nimbus III also do fine.

But then you have Cynthia Gouw, playing Romulan Ambassador Caithlin Dar, who had very little business saying lines in front of a camera.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, we start out on Nimbus III, “The Planet of Galactic Peace”.  This actually has the germ of a good idea: a planet that was supposed to be a neutral place for Humans, er…  I mean The Federation, Klingons and Romulans to send ambassadors, and was open for anyone to settle on.  It would be a central place for openness and communication.  Except it failed, because no one except the backwash of the galaxy went there, so it was an utter mess.  Frankly, that’s cool.  A better movie might have found a way to keep that idea at the center of it.  But this is not a better movie.  Instead, we get a strange teaser involving a laughing Vulcan who needs a starship.

And then we get the crew of the Enterprise, who are all on vacation.  Well, mostly.  Kirk, Spock and McCoy are camping together, and Chekov and Sulu are… also camping somewhere else, it seems.  (And I should point out, we know from Generations that Sulu has a spouse and daughter, so… he’s blowing them off?)  Scotty is staying on the Enterprise because it’s in shambles. For reasons never properly explained, it seems the Enterprise-A was just a mess from the get go.  I like the idea that while Kirk has been “rewarded” a new Enterprise after the events of movies III and IV, someone in the top brass is pissed at him and gives him a lemon of a ship.  Also, Uhura is sticking around on the ship, because she seems to have a crush on Scotty at this point.

That’s a loose thread of plot that never quite goes anywhere.  It’s not something that’s picked up from the previous movies or the original show, nor does this movie actually do anything with it.  It’s a bit odd that hear is when she gets sweet on him.
Anyhow, Laughing Vulcan and his band of ragamuffins capture the three Ambassadors on Nimbus III, and the Federation calls in Kirk and the Enterprise crew to take care of it.  Here, at least, they do a clever twist on the “only ship in the area” canard that most of the Trek movies use  (especially since most of the time “the area” is in orbit of Earth, so it never makes any sense.)  Here, at least, the admiral sending them says, yeah, there’s other ships that are closer, but none of them have Jim Kirk.

So, it’s a rescue mission.  The Klingons are coming as well, but they aren’t coming to rescue their ambassador.  Really, they’ve got no stake as far as that is concerned.  The Klingon captain is only coming because he wants to shoot at Kirk.  That's his entire motivation in this movie: he wants to shoot things, and Kirk will be a good thing to shoot.

The Romulans, by the way, aren’t sending anyone to rescue people.  I find this interesting, especially since of the three ambassadors, Caithlin Dar is the only idealist.  She actually believes in Nimbus III.  So of course her government leaves her to hang when she gets kidnapped.  That might be because the Romulans shipped her away because they were sick of hearing her talk about peace and happiness.  (There's a deleted scene where she says she volunteered, but I imagine the Romulan government was thrilled to send her away.)  Their response was likely, “Oh, she was kidnapped?  That’s a real shame, we ought to do something about that.”

Anyway, the Enterprise stumbles to Nimbus III. Chekov stays on the ship and pretends to be captain to negotiate with the Laughing Vulcan, while everyone else goes down to the planet.  And here is possibly the most WTF scene in all of Star Trek (including the Hyperevolved Salamander Sex of Voyager), where we learn that Kirk went to the Jayne Cobb School of Strategy.

“We need a distraction.  I say Uhura gets nekkid.”


Now, I don’t know if 50-something Nichelle Nichols actually did that fan dance or not.  And it’s not explicit or anything.  As a bit of sci-fi tinged burlesque, it’s not that bad, in isolation.  But it’s so damn random and out of character for everyone involved.  Was this why the admiral insisted he needed Jim Kirk?  “No one else would have his communication officer do a fan dance!”

Anyway, they “rescue” the hostages, who in turn don’t want to be rescued, because they’ve teamed up with the Laughing Vulcan—screw it, Sybok.  Everyone gets on the shuttlecraft and goes back to the Enterprise, but not before the Klingons show up and start shooting.  So there’s another good bit where they essentially crash the shuttle into the shuttle bay so that Enterprise’s shields are only down for a second.  But then Sybok gets the upper hand (since Spock won’t shoot him despite Kirk’s direct order), imprisons Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and brainwashes Sulu and Uhura.

This movie apparently got a lot of rewrites, and was cut for time and budget, so there’s a lot of scribbling in the margins of what's happening on screen.  The whole bit with Sybok’s brainwashing is a big part of that.  He “removes your pain”, which seems to involve using Vulcan mind-meld techniques to find your most painful memory, and then helping you heal from it, and as a result you totally want to work with him.  There’s an underlying sense of cult-leadership in there, because almost everyone he does it to then has unswerving loyalty to him.  But despite this solid concept never quite works, especially since the only people we get a strong sense of the process is with Spock and McCoy.  But he does something that makes everyone go, “We totally have to go to this god planet in the center of the galaxy”.  It also means Uhura more explicitly demonstrates her crush on Scotty, like she now feels free to express things she kept under wraps.  There’s also a bit of… almost romantic chemistry between the Federation and Romulan ambassadors.  But like I said, that’s all scribbled in the margins.  There might have been a more interesting movie here if it wasn't forced to keep it at 100 minutes.

Back to the core—Kirk, Spock and McCoy escape from the brig with Scotty’s near buffoonish help, but said escape is meaningless, since Sybok catches them in a few minutes, and then explains his plan and tries to do his brainwash/psychic healing thing.  Also, he’s Spock’s half-brother.  I’m not quite sure why that’s here, since it doesn’t seem to really have a huge impact.  There are brief moments where Spock is hinted at having some divided loyalties, but never in a meaningful way.  It wouldn't have been significantly different if Spock and Sybok were just close childhood friends.  But it all leads to McCoy and Spock’s attempted brainwashing.

Let me tell you, Spock’s makes no damn sense.  I mean, yeah, his secret pain is that his father hates him for being half-human, which is kind of a sucky way for Sarek to be, what with marrying a human woman and all.  Of course, the implication is it’s more Spock’s issue over objective reality.  But I really fail to see how anything Sybok does with this “heals” Spock’s pain in any way.  “You think Dad hates you.” “Yes.” “All right then.”  McCoy’s is at least something dynamic, and it’s a nice bit for DeForest Kelley to play, where he euthanizes his sick father, only for there to have been a cure discovered shortly afterward.  Of course, the big flaw is the scene plays like it only happened a little while ago, and at best McCoy’s already ancient father was only robbed of a few years.  If it had been clearer that this was from McCoy’s youth, it would have worked better, and all it would have taken would be to cast someone in their forties as McCoy’s dad.

Brainwashing doesn’t take, though, as Kirk refuses to participate.  "I need my pain!" is a bit cheesy, but it fits Kirk's character-- a lesson he learned way back in "The Enemy Within".  (Yes, I am an old school Trekkie.) Since he doesn't do it, Spock and McCoy keep their loyalty to Kirk. Sybok is surprised, but ultimately doesn’t care, since he’s taking the ship through the Great Barrier in the Center of the Galaxy anyway.

So let’s talk about this bit, because here’s a key part where the movie really falls short. The Great Barrier, we’re told, is something you just can’t get through.  Ships have tried and failed.  Except Sybok totally thinks he can do it.  Why?  HE JUST CAN.  He compares this to breaking the sound barrier or warp speed, which implies he’s got some sort of science-doing behind his plan, or at least figured out some secret key to it.  Nope.  It’s just, “We’re gonna do it!” and Kirk is all, “Can’t be done!” and Sybok counters, “Gonna!”

And he does.

Seriously, he just goes through it.  No big.  The Klingons do it ten minutes later.  There’s no trick to it or anything.  It’s just, go through it.  Which makes you think the whole “No ship has made it through the Great Barrier” was really, “Nobody tried, because they took some readings and said, ‘screw that!’”

Once they are through, Sybok kind of becomes a good guy.  I mean… I think that Sybok is never a bad guy.  He’s determined and passionate, and does troubling things for his goals… but even his brainwashing comes off as more “lifting the scales”, and he gives hopeless people purpose.  But once they are through the barrier, he’s won and proved his point, so he just gives the ship back to Kirk.  And Kirk, being Kirk, is all for checking out what they’ve found now that they are through.
What they find, of course, is not God, but a prison for a powerful God-like being.  The details of which we never really find out—the being says something along the lines of “eternities I’ve been trapped in this place”, so you presume he was put there by equivalent beings of power who found him dangerous and destructive.  Now, whatever he is, he’s a Trickster.  It’s made implicitly clear that he somehow contacted Sybok to make his escape.  Sybok’s self-sacrifice, trying his whole “I couldn’t help but notice your pain” line on the Trickster, is played like a bit of redemption for him.  I’m not sure if that works.  It almost does, in that it feels like it's supposed to.   Most things don’t work with the ending, save Kirk’s line, “What does God need with a starship?”  They apparently ran out of money and effects didn’t work out, but I don’t think Kirk fighting a rock monster would have made the difference.

What it really comes down to is there is a seed of a better movie hidden with it, but the script, and more to the point the direction, don’t let it come out.  There was a lot of public goodwill from The Voyage Home when this was made, and I think a lot of its problems come from A. coasting on that goodwill and B. trying to recapture the easy comedy of that movie, and it comes off very forced.
But, hey: fan dance.  Seriously.

Need More Space For...

What do I need more space for?

This is a trick question, right?

We all know I don't have a dedicated work space.  I'm a writing vagabond, going wherever I can with my rolling case carrying my laptop and writing notes.  Today I'm at the kitchen table, tomorrow I might be on the couch, next week: we'll see.   Maybe using the kitchen counter as a standing desk.

I would love a dedicated office, desk, etc.  Right now it's not an option, but when I do have that space, it'll be lovely.

I've mentioned this online before, and someone unhelpfully pointed me toward this cartoon of a Charles Bukowski quote.  As if to say, Hey, man, if you were really serious about your art, you wouldn't need a special office space.  You'd do just fine without it, because you'd be DRIVEN, man.

Screw that.  I mean, yes, I don't need it.  I think I've actively demonstrated that point plenty.  I can continue to work and do fine with nothing but my rolling-bag-vagabond-office and whatever flat surface I find.  I can.

That doesn't mean I don't want more.  That doesn't mean I shouldn't strive for having it, like it would make me soft.

Though, on some level, it's a nice metaphor for my writing career.  I mean, I'm doing pretty good.  But there's still plenty to achieve, and I kind of like that I still have to be hungry and fight for it.  That it hasn't gotten too easy.

If you've been following me for a while you're probably aware of my feelings of how this business is supposed to be.  I'll let Tom say it one more time.

 

UNDER THE RAINBOW: A Bad Movie I've Watched Many, Many, MANY Times

You know, a movie like Under the Rainbow really helps you appreciate the screenwriters of the 70s and 80s.  I mean, some of what they did—including Under the Rainbow—was completely batshit crazy, but at least you never went, “Oh, this same old thing again.”

Because, while Under the Rainbow is chock to the gills with uncomfortable levels of racism, sizeism and general bad taste that probably should have raised an eyebrow back then, let alone now…. you can’t say it’s predictable formula.

To whit: Depression Era Kansas, where a midget named Rollo is eagerly awaiting the news that Hollywood Wants Him.  After almost killing himself falling off a barn fixing the radio antenna, he gets word that, in fact, Hollywood does want him.  Or, at least, midgets and dwarves in general, since the casting call for a little picture named “The Wizard of Oz” has gone out.  So Rollo is off to Hollywood.

BUT also on his way to Hollywood is a German Spy, since the Nazis are on the move!  This spy?  Also a midget, played by the always reliable Billy Barty.  He’s supposed to meet a Japanese agent in Hollywood, and give him a secret America-invading map.  This is a crucial point that really gets glossed over: The Nazis already have a secret America-invading map.

BUT also on their way to Hollywood is a paranoid Duke and his half-blind wife, under the protection of Secret Service agent Chevy Chase.  The Duke is convinced someone is trying to assassinate him.  And that’s because someone is, but for a while Chevy doesn’t believe that.

BUT due to some sort of mix-up involving a secretary not doing her job, hotel reservations aren’t made properly, and the end result is poor Carrie Fisher is the poor movie studio lackey tasked with finding a place to put 150 midgets and dwarves.  She shoves them all into a hotel, which is the same one as the Duke and Duchess, as well as the German Spy and his Japanese counterpart.  Oh, and a tour group of Japanese photographers.

See, there’s the joke: the German and Japanese spy were supposed to have an easy time finding each other, since they’re looking for a midget and a Japanese man in a white suit with a camera, respectively.  Which, normally, would be things that stand out in a crowd, except the crowd is nothing but midgets and Japanese men in white suits with cameras.  And a Duke and Duchess, Chevy Chase, a series of suicidal dogs, a beleaguered Adam Arkin as the assistant hotel manager (desperate to prove his worth to his father), and Carrie Fisher in her period appropriate underwear.

That’s a lot of story balls in the air, people.  This movie is 97 minutes long and it uses them all.  Not well, mind you.  But it’s always got stuff happening.  Batshit is better than boring.

A big problem is the movie doesn’t commit to who the hero is.  It kind of wants it to be Rollo (Remember him?  Way up at the beginning of all this?), but it second guesses having him be the center of the movie, so it sticks Chevy Chase’s Secret Service Agent in the mix to do the real Hero Work.  But it keeps Rollo in orbit of Chevy, probably because when it comes time for someone to throw down with Nazi Billy Barty, if Chevy Chase did it, it’d just be weird.

So, while Chevy and Adam Arkin are mostly just replacing the Duchess’s dog (they keep dying, but she’s too blind to actually tell the constantly replaced lineage of dogs apart), Nazi Billy Barty gives the map to the wrong Japanese man, who is then accidentally killed by the Duke’s incompetent assassin, but not before he leaves the map in Carrie Fisher’s copy of the Wizard of Oz script.  So Nazi Billy Barty, of course, holds her at swordpoint, takes the script and her dress, and leaves her locked in the freezer.

You think I’m kidding about Carrie Fisher in her period-appropriate underwear, but it’s a prominent aspect of this movie.  The poster for the movie features her in her underwear, front and center, as if that's just how she is the whole movie.   It isn't.  It's just for this dramatic action centerpiece where she waits in the freezer with Rollo until Chevy rescues her.

Things come to a head as the assassin confronts the Duke and the real Japanese spy kills him, but Nazi Billy Barty escapes with the map, and Rollo chases him on a wagon… but then the wagon crashes.

And Rollo wakes up, having just fallen off the barn from the beginning of the movie, and it was all just a dream.  Chevy and Carrie and Adam Arkin and the Duke and Duchess and even the Japanese spy are all amongst the Depression-Era hobos living in the barn.  But the radio really does work, and there really is a casting calling for Rollo in Hollywood.  He gets on the bus, and the driver is: Non-Nazi Billy Barty!

It was just a dream, right?

No, but it was our collective nightmare.  Despite that, I know I saw it many, many… well, you know.

Perils of the Writer: Writing on the Road

Let me put this out there: I kind of love writing while on trips or on vacation.  Mostly because "vacation", for me, means I don't have to do household-y things, so I can relax, and relaxing for me is actually being able to get my work done.

Now, I've been blessed that my "regular" job ("day job" would be inaccurate) has given me the ability to go to Mexico several times in the past few years, and those vacations were also incredibly productive, writingwise.

Also, for road trips, now my son is driving (and he loves driving), so I don't have to drive.  A few weeks ago we went out to Big Bend, and I could sit in the back with a laptop and write as the long miles of Texas passed by.

BLISS.

For me, a "vacation" is a writing retreat, plan and simple.  It's a way to recharge and activate that creative energy.

Now, writing while at cons?  Nope.  Almost never happens.  Sometimes I get a bit done (especially if I end up staying at a different hotel from the con proper), but most of the time: that weekend is a wash.  Well, maybe not on the flights (if there are flights involved).   I can write on planes pretty well, also.  I'm pretty sure I finished the rough draft of The Holver Alley Crew (way back when) on a plane.

On that note: next weekend is kind of writing-retreat-staycation.  I'm hoping to get a lot done.  Fingers crossed.

EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY: A Bad Movie I've Watched Many, Many, MANY Times

So in my teenage years, I was a fan of The Doctor Demento Show, where he’d play a whole slew of novelty songs, and it was there that I first became familiar with Julie Brown.  She was most known for her song “The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun”, which was about… well, it’s right there in the title. There isn't much more to say about it.  While she had quite a few songs that were in regular rotation on Doctor Demento, that was far and away the most popular.

Diving deeper into the Julie Brown canon, there was a ditty called “Earth Girls Are Easy”, in which Julie sings about get seduced by a horny alien.  I liked the song, but it was pretty damn obscure-- even by "Songs by A Novelty Act On Doctor Demento" standards-- so it was quite surprising to see that Julie Brown was producing a movie of the same name.  At this point, Julie's visibility was slightly bigger, that she was a personality on MTV (but not to be confused with Downtown Julie Brown), but she was still a novelty-act comedian.  Getting a major motion picture at all was a coup, especially starring two of Hollywoods biggest upcoming stars.  I mean, for modern context, imagine if Rachel Bloom had, instead of making Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, gotten a deal for a full-length feature version of "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" AND gotten Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling to play the leads.  That's kind of what we're talking about here.

I mean, if the movie is remembered for anything, it's for being the follow-up for then husband-and-wife team Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum, who were super hot and marketable after The Fly.  Needless to say, for them to cash in that capital working on what would never be more than a cult movie—after all, a musical alien-sex-comedy wasn’t exactly going to be the sleeper feel-good hit of the year— was definitely a strange choice.

This means that Julie plays second banana in her own movie, casting herself as the best friend to Geena.  Geena plays a hairdresser with severe romantic problems, despite the fact that she looks like, well, Geena Davis.  He attempts to surprise seduce her fiancé Doctor Love (played by the late Charles Rockett) reveals that he’s been cheating on her with his nurses.  So she kicks him out of the house and electrocutes his fish, while lip-synching a ballad that is clearly, clearly not Geena Davis singing.


The movie IS a musical, but most of the musical duty is provided by Julie Brown herself.  The biggest indulgence along those lines is a completely extraneous number of “Because I’m A Blonde”—another one of her hits on the Doctor Demento Show-- in which Julie performs in blonde wig.  Here she's playing someone who has absolutely nothing to do with her regular character in the movie.  The whole scene has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Seriously, saying it comes out of left field is an insult to scenes that legitimately come out of left field.  One of the other characters randomly mentions there's a beauty contest on the beach, we cut to this musical number, and then the movie comes back to the plot.

Plot?


Oh, right.

So while Geena Davis is bemoaning her romantic woes, three furry aliens are surveying Earth in their spaceship.  And by “surveying”, I mean spying on Geena sunbathing in her bikini.  This causes them to crash their spaceship in her pool.

(There is a small bit of business involving shrinking and growing when entering and exiting the ship, probably because they wanted to commit to the idea of crashing an alien spaceship in a pool, and had to justify it being that small.)

Anyhow, after some wackiness and miscommunication, Geena makes friends with the aliens, and then takes them to her hair salon (the “Curl Up and Dye”) to make-over them to Earth acceptable.  Shaving and dying the aliens turns them into Goldblum and pre-fame Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans.

The rest of the plot is largely negligible, as the aliens party on Earth, hook up with girls, and Geena and Jeff fall in love.  Doctor Love tries to get Geena back, and starts some sort of fight with the aliens.  It’s neither memorable or relevant.  The point is at the aliens have to leave Earth, and Geena goes with them, because why not?

Really, plot isn’t the point.

The point is Julie Brown got to milk her fifteen minutes and make her movie with sexy aliens and goofy songs and a future Oscar winner, and it got released on the big screen.  For a performer who was entirely a novelty act, that’s pretty much a big check in the W column.

And, yeah, I’m probably being kinder to this movie than it deserves, but it’s got no illusions about what it is.  I can respect that.

Perils of the Writer: The Novel Refractory Period

How long should you take between novels?

Or, if you have contracts and deadlines, how long can you afford to take?  That's the real question.

Now, at this point, with six novels written, two more waiting for editorial turnaround, one out shopping and one in draft... I've got my methodology down.  That isn't to say that I've got nothing left to learn, because... I've always got more to learn.  But I don't really sit down and ask myself, "How do I write a novel again?"  Nor do I really dither about What To Write Next.  Given contracts and release schedules, that's kind of a given right now.

But how much time do you take in between?

For the purpose of this discussion, I'm talking about going from a polished draft of one novel to starting the rough draft of the next.  The polished draft is "finished" when I send it in an email to either agent or editor.  More work will have to be done, but it's as finished as it's going to be without their input.  And the rough draft starts when I write actual words that will appear in the manuscript.  Outlining, re-outlining, and other "pre-production" work don't count.

Now that I've defined my terms, I can say that, for me,  a two-week gap is about right.  I took two weeks between turning in Imposters and starting Lady Henterman's, and also between Lady Henterman's and Parliament of Bodies.  Those two-weeks are usually spent either on the pre-production stuff for the upcoming project, or doing side-project work to reboot myself. But I definitely don't like to take any longer than that.  Two weeks is plenty.  By then, I'm itching to get going again.

And along those lines, time to hit the word mines.  See you down there.

XANADU: A Bad Movie I've Watched Many, Many, MANY Times

Let’s make something clear from the outset: Gene Kelly was a national treasure.  I’m not a big “old movie” watcher, but damn if Singing in the Rain doesn’t hold up to the test of time.  And a lot of that has to do with Mr. Gene Kelly.

Which makes his presence in Xanadu—which ended up being his final movie—somewhat mystifying. He's better than this.  So much better than this.  However, in being so, the man adds a touch of class to a movie that would otherwise be a glorious clusterfuck of holy whatness.

Because this movie does not make a lick of sense, and I think we all know this.  I mean, the plot goeth thusly: an artist (Sonny, played by Michael Beck) is tired of working for the man, and his muse shows up and teams him up with Gene Kelly, and they open a roller disco together.   THAT’S IT.

The more I think about it, the more confused I am by this.  Specifically: given the Point A that Sonny starts at, how reaching Point B at the end is possibly considered a win.  I mean, I get that he’s a struggling artist who just wants to do his art on not answer to the man… that makes sense, in an immature kind of way.  Yeah, he’s having a petty hissy fit about purity of art, but some artists do that.  He wants to paint and draw what he wants, not what those corporate types want to dictate to him!  Fine.  Understandable character motivation.

But what in the name of the nine muses does that have to do with running a roller-disco club?


And, hey, lets get into that whole nine muses thing, since that’s a key element of the story.  Olivia Newton-John plays a literal daughter-of-Zeus muse.  Named Kira.  Now, I know my muses: Clio, Thalia, Erato, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Calliope, Terpsichore, Urania, Melpomene.  No Kira.  Now,  I've seen some claim that Kira is really Terpsichore, but I say that’s retconning bullshit.  Because this movie gives no sign that the maker had any idea that the muses had specific names or roles.  They’re just nine hot ladies in flowing dresses, and eight of them don’t do squat.

Plus when Sonny confronts Zeus, Zeus calls her “Kira”.  So don’t try to sell me that “she’s really Terpsichore” crap.

But who cares about all that?  This movie is about crazy, crazy musical numbers with Olivia Newton-John and ELO.  Muses coming to life from a mural?  That's a musical number.  Shopping for clothes?  That’s a musical number.  Falling in love?  That’s a musical number with Don Bluth animation.

And dreaming up this crazy club that would be run by classy Gene Kelly and not-doing-art-for-the-man Sonny?  You know that’s a musical number.  In fact, that’s my favorite, where Gene is dreaming up a big band number with Olivia fronting an Anderson Sistersesque trio, and Sonny is dreaming up a “hot band” that’s as early 80s New Wave as you can get.  (The Tubes, actually).  OK, it's more correct to say that the Anderson Sisters thing is clearly Olivia singing, but the three girls up there doing the bit are very much not Olivia.  And the “80s” vision is some serious retro-sci-fi nightmare fuel.  But, while the 40s-style song is fine enough, and the 80s-style song is pretty weak sauce… I have to admit, when the two songs come together, I kind of dig it.

Absolutely zero plot is expended in "how will we start a new dance club?".  The idea is brought up, and then they're going to open it.  There really are no roadblocks whatsoever. Gene decided he wants to open a club and told Sonny, “And you’re my partner!”, and they're off to the races.  Done deal.  The only impediment to a perfect opening night is that Kira, being a Muse and subject to the arbitrary rules of musedom or something, has to go back into her painting.  Because she did her job and inspired Sonny—the artist and painter— to open a dance club.
Yeah, I'm not going to let that go.

Zeus lets her go to the opening night anyway, so it really isn’t a big deal.  Clearly the people who made this movie realized there wasn’t a scrap of conflict, so they had to add a touch of drama. I mean, really, this movie has barely a wisp of actual content.  It’s filled with songs and dances, and still clocks in at under 90 minutes.  So there isn’t much time to actually talk or have a plot or anything.

With that out of the way, it's time to get the club open.  And by “get the club open” I mean create a roller-derby fascist zoot-suited nightmare.  Clapping, stomping in unison, matching outfits and shouting “XANADU!” together.  Even granting that its 80-ness has aged poorly, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.  But yet it's exactly the sort of club that Stefan from SNL would love.  It's got everything. Roller-skating tap dance.  Mimes on tightropes.  Sci-fi space queens.  I imagine if someone wandered into this club, they would presume they had stumbled upon a cult.  Which it kind of is, because then it ends with huge TOTALLY INSANE song and dance number with all nine muses where they jump around through different musical styles magically.  I’m not sure who thought having Olivia switching on a dime from glamrock sexpot to cowboy girl was a good idea.  

Frankly, there were very few good ideas in this movie.  Save giving Gene Kelly a dance number with Olivia dressed in a WWII Uniform. That was excellent.  Because that man was a national treasure.