Review of Grease (1978) by Viniciusbrito — 09 Nov 2018

Danny Zuko, a cool guy with a reputation to keep, and Sandy Olsson, a correct girl that plays nice with life, have met on the beach during their vacations of school, they spend a whole day there and became very in love with eachother, after the day is out Sandy supposedly goes back to Australia, where she is from, and Danny will go to the local school for one last semester. The thing is that they end in the same school, and when they meet again she notices that he isn't the same person anymore, and he don't want to go into a different stereotype for keeping impressing his friends. Directed by Randal Kleiser and based on Grease by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey.

This movie is about adolescence and loving relationships, it did a very nice and fun job showing how they both, in a very stereotyped way, would deal with the teen love, showing both sides on how they did speak about that to the boy with his boy friends, and the girl with her girl friends, the boy being the most maleficent and pushing everything to the most exaggerated as possible, while the girl is the most conservative as possible. The story not necessary is giving good examples to follow in here, like people making fun of the virginity of some character, or only making her that cool when she is dressing something dirty or smoking, but yeah, 70s. They did a good job on putting the songs in context, you can clear see in some moments that they aren't really singing in the scene, this could took you out of the movie, but generally it wasn't that much of a problem. The characters are very stereotyped, you have the group of boys that are bad boys and pretend to be the most bad asses as they can, you have the big nerd that one likes, the truly bad boy with a scar in his face, the group of girls that gossip about stuff. There are some moments that you can really relate of what did happened during the school, in others the characters could be so annoying that you just want the scene to go on. The movie is very funny, they could pic the necessity of the boys to try to be bad asses and they could turn that into a lot of very good moments of jokes, the movie overall is funny. How they used the mannerisms of the characters, in special Danny's, to make jokes was great, like how he walks or how he always have a hair comb to brush his hair, that was so on point. It is good that each character have their particular characteristics and personalities, it helps in we believing that they exist and in we caring for them, we quicly learn how they are, and get them, in the girls group this happens fast with pretty much all of them, in the boys one, some are a bit aside.

The giant thing about this movie, what makes this so great and classic, is surely the songs and the choreography, it is simply amazing this combination. The songs for the film are all made by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, that had Broadway performances, in here the all actors, really all of them, have done such of a great singing job, they all had good vocals wich was essential to make those songs permanent in our heads. The coreography in general for the scenes, don't happen in all the clips, but in the ones that it does happen are very well done, the synchrony aren't necessary perfect, but it feels so natural, so simple and so happy that it definely can contagious, and the single dances moves, specially made by John Travolta are just fantastic, it is impossible to watch that and don't go all the way for repeating, his dance feels a lot different, is like things that anyone can do, and that is fantastic. This songs really have made me dance some movies and smile a lot, those clips are definely holding up for forever, because they are great.

The movie have some fantasy aspects, that i'm not sure how it does applies in the movie, but it get all together with the story, showing what could possibly be dreams for their lifes. The montage is very nice, some moments we get smart transitions, in other nice sequences without cuts, some pretty shots are done in here.

John Travolta did a great job while singing, a incredible in dancing, but a not so good in acting, during dramatic moments mostly, he was funny, but in dramatic parts he didn't convinced me at all. Olivia Newton-John is also a great singer and dancer, during some parts she was just a delight to watch. Stockard Channing plays a grouch girl, in other times very risky, her mannerisms was also pretty interesting, and again a very good singer. All the characters are supossed to be teenagers at school, but all the actors are way older than that and you can easily notice this.

This movie is fantastic because of his spirit, it completely made me want to shake my body after watching it with dances and songs completely unforgettable.