Bubblegum for the masses.

Rating: 4/10 (8 October 2010)

When this came out in 1978, I had just hit my teens, so just about the right age to enjoy it. But I never understood the appeal, even then. A series of 1950s pastiche songs permanently in the charts made this the last film in the world I'd want to see. It was one of those inexplicable and inescapable pop culture phenomena which annoyed the hell out of everyone who was not enraptured by it.
Seeing it for the first time all these years later, I have tried to take as unprejudiced a view as I can. I have tried to watch it a few times before, but always found it leaden and predictable. The music is not the only cliché-ridden thing in it, indeed it consists of nothing more than a series of 1950s clichés strung together. Two rival gangs (safely sanitised naturally). A school dance. A drive-in movie. A car race. Looks like the authors watched Rebel Without A Cause and Westside Story and blended them together. Minus any of the threat inherent in those works of course. Danny's gang sound and act like Top Cat's gang from the 70s cartoon.
It might be said that these things have become 50s clichés because they were so prevalent at the time. Fair enough. But these scenes have no organic connection with each other. You just feel the writers say "what shall we do now? I know, let's have a song about a t-bird, they had those in the 50s." Nothing has any real consequence in this film nor is there any character development. One girl has unprotected sex and for a time thinks she's pregnant. Then it turns out she's not. Yippee.
Sandy wants to be respected by Danny. But has a volte-face after seeing him win a car race. She then turns into the local skank and comes onto him, which would drive most men to run a mile. Its lucky this is set in the 1950s when the worst vice was smoking; if it were set today, she would turn into a crack whore.
All of this could be countered with the fact that this is not a plot or character driven film but a musical, and the plot merely exists to hang a series of set pieces on. After all many musicals of Hollywood's golden age have laughable plots merely designed to frame spectacular song and dance routines. So that brings us back to the quality of the songs themselves. Are they good enough that we can overlook the film's obvious faults? Well "Summer nights" and "You're the one that I want" are good songs and produce the most memorable scenes. There is nothing spectacular or even inventive about them in the manner of old Fred and Ginger numbers, however. The other songs are largely forgettable but I do like the production "beauty school dropout" which is the most imaginative thing in the film.
Worst of all is the title track which stands out like a sore thumb. It is a disco-era song, completely at variance with the rest of the music. And its lyrics are incomprehensible. "Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion and grease is the way we are feeling" would rank high as the most mindless ever written.
Ultimately this is very non-threatening entertainment. Agreeable enough but it says a lot about public taste that something so derivative has been such a sensational and so widely imitated.