Review of Grease (1978) by Harry W — 11 Feb 2014

I admittedly avoided watching Grease for so long because of it entailing a teenage love story turned into a 1970's musical, and because growing up all the morning news shows would boast about Olivia Newton-John and remind us that she was the star of this film. I instantly retreated away from watching it, until one day I decided it was time.

As it turns out the reasons I disliked Grease before watching it turned out to leak over into the actual experience I had of witnessing it.

I found the songs to be annoyingly repetitive and sung with excessively high pitched voices. And for a musical, this is problematic. I found little of the music to be catchy or compelling with the exception of the songs "Grease Lightnin" which wasn't bad and "You're the one that I want" which was decent in parts. But the rest of it was unappealing dribble that wouldn't end up on my iPod any sooner than.

Underneath the flashy musical sequences lays a generic and dull love story. And I am an avid opposer of recycled love stories, particularly teenage themed ones because they seem all the more ridiculous and unbelievable.

And there was barely any narrative in this one or any compelling characters which aren't just shallow stereotypes that fail to develop beyond the production stage. The characters are nothing but stereotypes, and I found both the greasers and the Pink Ladies to be annoying in one way or another.

Although John Travolta nailed his role as Danny Zuko with impressive singing, strong physicality and an immense sense of charm in the role along the same lines as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli, and Olivia Newton-John used all her Australian charm and powerful singing talent to characterise Sandy Olsson.

But aside from them I found little charm in the rest of the cast members who were essentially all annoying in one way or another.

Grease fails to appeal to me on practically every level, except that the setting was convincing due to strong costumes and production design, and the cinematography was very atmospheric in many scenes.

But aside from that I thought Grease was a joke. It had no serious development in its story and in no way did Grease transcend the thin roots it was written in or the lack of originality.

Grease has less appeal to me than the grease from a McDonald's Cheeseburger, and save from John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John's performances there is nothing to hope for if the concept doesn't have surface appeal to you or if you don't easily get caught up in the glitz and glam of flashy Hollywood musical cinema.