Grease

Inexplicably the highest grossing movie musical ever, Grease is a soulless, synthetic experience. There's no real personality here to speak of, just an indifference to style and substance. This is normally not a huge problem with musicals, as they make up for a lack of heavy substance with an abundance of style. Grease offers none of that.

I know I’m in the minority here, as Grease is insanely popular, a cult film that just won’t have the good taste to not infect itself upon our pop culture consciousness every chance it gets. There’s something understandable about its omnipresence though, as it’s entirely appeal is that of pure nostalgia. A scrubbed clean version of nostalgia in which the social, economic, and political realities is nowhere to be found, and only the outward lies of the images and memories of the era are presented.

But that still doesn’t entirely explain away its continued popularity. It is empty calories, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as plenty of beloved films are pure artifice and joyous, but Grease can’t even bother to populate its musical with actors who can sing, singers who can act, or numerous players who can dance. Many movie musicals are shining, happy artificial escapist entertainments, and they’re memorable for moments like flirtatious tap dance between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or Gene Kelly’s impressionistic ballets in his 50s output.

Grease doesn’t have any of that, as the editing cuts away to hide the fact that many of them can’t dance, but there’s no disguising the fact that they can’t sing. John Travolta is an obvious offender for this, as his entire vocal performance is a poor Elvis Presley impression, and those high notes in “Summer Nights” are painful. Olivia Newton-John sings marvelously, as well she should since that was her main profession, but she’s not an actress. Many of her scenes feature a blank-eyed stare, or a general sense that she’s looking just slightly off camera at someone giving her a thumbs up/down in response to her emoting.

Even worse is that Grease is supposed to be a teenager rock and roll movie, and all of the cast members are clearly ten to fifteen years older than their respective characters. Most of them are indifferent to performing, and it becomes distracting to watch someone pushing thirty playing a wide-eyed, horny eighteen-year-old. The only performance of any worth is Stockard Channing’s Rizzo, the most dynamic character in the entire piece. This is highly ironic as Channing is the oldest of the cast members, but she’s the only one who can breathe life into her role.

For a rock and roll pastiche, many of the new songs sound more like seventies soft rock than the appropriate era. The clearest example being “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” a guilty pleasure to be sure, but it wouldn’t sound out-of-place on a Debbie Boone album. Even worse is how lackluster so many of the musical numbers are. “Hopelessly” is supposed to be a swoony romance, and the staging isn’t terrible, but the direction is lacking in energy, wit, or any emotion. It torpedoes this number, but it’s not the only one.

Director Randal Kleiser turns a randy teenage musical into an antiseptic experience. Many of the hornier jokes are presented flatly, with no irony or camp or joy. You’re seriously going to just present a hotdog jumping into a bun during Danny’s lovesick number without a punchline? Or the “Hand Jive” that obviously looks like a pantomimed hand job, but it filmed as straight-faced as possible. There’s no personality to Grease, and when you strip away much of the bawdy humor you strip away something central to the piece. In spite of this limp, smile-plastered tone, only the veteran players (Joan Blondell, Sid Caesar, Frankie Avalon, and Eve Arden among them) leave a positive lasting impression. It doesn’t matter how much I rail against this dumb, lumbering thing, as its promise of eternal summer optimism will continually be eaten up. If Rydell High is where you want to hang out for two hours, I won’t stop you. But you can find me at the Kit Kat Club.