Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu (2001)

Marco Polo: Return to Xanadu (2001)

Directed by: Ron Merk

Starring: Paul Ainsley, Alan Altshuld, Nicholas Gonzalez

The idea of making Marco Polo into an Aladdin-type adventurer is so out there and bizarre, I just knew I had to watch this movie. Do I regret it? Yes and no. It’s really, really, really bad. But… I kinda like that.

Okay, Marco Polo, the Italian merchant, visited Kubla Khan in Xanadu (in what I assume is his stately pleasure dome where he makes decrees), who gave him a magic amulet. An evil Snidely Whiplash-type character steals another part of the amulet, which gives him super evil magic powers. Later, Marco Polo’s son, Marco, goes on an adventure to find his parents who had disappeared, and along the way he runs afoul of the bad guy and meets a dinosaur and… all sorts of other insane shit happens.

This movie is pretty hard to keep track of, because there’s just this barrage of images clearly borrowed from other sources, specifically Aladdin and other Disney animated features of the sort. It’s just so damn weird and it makes little to no sense… apparently part of it was repurposed from another movie entirely, so that certainly doesn’t help. I’d have to watch it again to be able to explain it better, and I really don’t want to do that.