Re-visited

Rating: 6/10 (22 July 2003)

The songs are wonderful (all but the `Sandra Dee' number), the scene with Travolta trying out for the different sports is top notch, and this musical/movie has been an inspiration for many. The last 15 minutes of the movie is pure musical brilliance (except for possibly the dumbest scene in musical history: when the car started to fly). Personally, I had not seen this movie in 18 or 20 years, and I must admit that it has tarnished quite a bit for me over time. In fact, I can only give it a 6.8/10Bottom line, I think most people must have a sentimental attachment to `Grease' in order to like it after all these years. Too much fluff for me, but I can see why people dig it. Not that I cannot get into syrupy type movies; however, I found myself loathing the parts where it sounded like everyone talking at once. There was very little breathing space and only so many leather jackets and 30-year-old teenagers the eye could take. Also I am more of a film-as-art critic than I was the first million times I saw `Grease" )back in the early eighties).
Don't get me wrong. I mean, I am of the generation in which this movie came out; nevertheless, I have since become a firm believer in keeping stage productions off the silver screen. Combining the two genres has done nothing but muddy the waters a bit. It is like 99% of the time when a band covers a song it is never as great as when the original artists did it. What's more, it does not really seem like art to me when a Director or a Producer takes an existing stage production and trys to pass it off to the film crowd as something new. If all it takes to make a box office smash is to take someone elses work, add a few extra lights, nifty camera angles, and a few big names, then hell, I want a piece of that action! It is a lazy man's game and it does not support artistic integrity. A case in point, take any opera, film it, put it on DVD...a few people will buy it, but most of the purist will snub their collective noses at it. Then again, the movie going public (in general) do not SEEM to be so pure in the search for excellence in their chosen genre. *NOTE* I am not so much talking about "Grease" here, but a certain movie named after the Windy City, that won a best picture Oscar. What a travesty But, hey, if people never mixed different styles of art together then we would not have nearly half the music that we have todayso who am I to complain?
Nonetheless, as pure film/art I think `Grease' would have been better off on Broadway. And I bet John Travolta was not even driving that car in the big car race scene (ha) (Not really funny).
Fun to watch 68% of the time. 6.8/10
I could say so more, but nobody reads this stuff anyway.