![]() I can well imagine this film getting a remake. ![]() This, of course, is Newton-John, who goes home with her – but, oh dear, it can only be for Christmas. A lonely, unhappy girl, whose mother died when she was little, is moping around a department store one Christmastide and wishes that a pretty mannequin would come to life and be her mother. ![]() She also made a forthright contribution to the 2010 docudrama 1 a Minute, about breast cancer.īut Olivia Newton-John made what cult completists think of as Christmas-movie history with her starring role in the outrageously sentimental but shrewdly judged 1990 TV movie A Mom for Christmas. Again, the soundtrack album went through the roof.Īfter this, Newton-John’s roles are an interesting, eclectic mix: she had a supporting part in the groundbreaking Aids drama It’s My Party (1996), played a hockey mom in Score: A Hockey Musical (2010) and had a good-sport cameo in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017). ![]() Four angels are monitoring the progress of these two reprobate humans, and there is a cringeworthy turn from Oliver Reed as the devil. It’s not a bad premise for a comedy thriller by any means, but the fantasy element is leaden. She gets away with the money that he is blamed for stealing – so he comes after her. Newton-John, miscast as a cynical bank teller, hands over the bag of cash he demands but sneakily switches the cash-bundles for deposit slips. Travolta plays an inventor who owes money to the mob, so robs a bank in desperation. Newton-John’s follow-up movie, Two of a Kind (1983), written and directed by TV veteran John Herzfeld and again co-starring Travolta, did not revive the old Grease magic – sadly, it deserved some of the sniffy reviews. Photograph: Universal/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock Surreal and spectacular … rollerskating with Michael Beck in Xanadu. The opening roller-disco dance scene, led by Kelly himself, is surreal and spectacular. Kira was once the muse to a former big band leader (Kelly) and becomes the same inspirational though elusive figure for a young would-be artist played by Michael Beck. She plays a beautiful and mysterious woman called Kira who turns out to be the immortal Greek muse Terpsichore, one of the nine muses of Olympus. Newton-John had the distinction of starring in it opposite Gene Kelly in his final film role, and she has a charming song-and-dance routine with him. ![]() The fantasy romance Xanadu (1980) – directed by Robert Greenwald, since known for political documentaries – was quite extraordinary, an epic mashup of disco flash, golden age Hollywood glamour and some strange VR-style inner-space scenes (four years before Disney’s computer game mind-trip Tron). Audiences – both LGBTQ and straight – have never stopped loving her. There are some gems and cult classics in her career: audacious, exotic flights of fancy, including one that her hardcore fans think of as the most underrated Christmas movie of all time. But after Grease, she had a limited number of film and TV drama credits and her movies benefited greatly from the soundtrack album sales – that now vanished profit-centre of the industry. It would be unfair to call Newton-John the cinematic equivalent of a one-hit wonder. Newton-John’s wonderfully unselfconscious performance as squeaky-clean Sandy gave her a movie star status that she never entirely lost, though never entirely earned. Grease was as gorgeously innocent as Newton-John herself, and the beguiling niceness of everyone involved (even Travolta’s Danny and Stockard Channing’s fierce Rizzo) made it a rocket-fuelled hit. Video: You’re the One That I Want from Grease ![]()
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