Grease 2 (1982) We can't make the same claim about this summer of '82 movie as we did about John Carpenter's "The Thing"....(see yesterday's post)
Coming 4 years after the John Travolta-Olivia Newton-John blockbuster musical, 'Grease 2 garnered neither great praise nor did it suffer the steaming heap 'o hatred heaped on "The Thing".
Harmless, bland and unexciting, nobody could care enough to like it or diss it all that much.....other than to push it to the side as a tired, charisma-free attempt to grab some more cash off the 'Grease' name.
And over the years, unlike "The Thing", "Grease 2" most definitely did not take 360 degree turn into being gradually re-evaluated as as a true classic of its genre.
Still, some audiences have indeed taken the misbegotten little musical into their hearts and the movie joined "Clueless" and "Mean Girls" as staples of teen sleepover parties.
Which leads us to ask, as always.......anything worth remembering about it?
Sure......a few odds and ends.
Michelle Pfeiffer.....let's not kid ourselves here. She constitutes about 85 percent of the reason anyone would sit through this again. Or even for the first time. Does her very own singing, too......
The Single Entendre sex songs Was there ever an original score for a movie musical that was so single-mindedly obsessed with gettin' some nooky? Virtually every song here, a few even catchy, stayed firmly focused doin' the deed, whether the tunes cover bowling, sex education or duck-and-cover civil defense.
The 50's icons popping up........always fun to the that decades teen heart-throbs, Connie Stevens and Tab Hunger put in appearances. But we still wonder why Eve Arden, once the sharp and savvy high school teacher of "Our Miss Brooks", evolved into such a befuddled principal........
The bouncy choreography.....No surprise here, since Patricia Birch, who choreographed the original "Grease" (both the show and and the film), returned here to direct the film as well. She moves the sequel right along with a keen visual style, so it's a shame this was her first and last film direction assignment.
The overaged "teenagers" The film wouldn't qualify to carry the 'Grease' name unless the high school kids were played by actors in their late 20's and 30's.....we consider it part of the charrm.
We didn't mind at all going back to re-visit of "Grease 2"......it remains what it always was, fast, silly and fun.....no more, no less. (And far from the zero-to-hero trip that "The Thing" took over this passage of 40 years.
Nice to return to an age when the kids sang "Let's do it for our country".....which meant doing the horizontal mambo before the nuclear warheads drop. 3 stars (***)
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