Slick!

Rating: 10/10 (1 December 2011)

This toe-tapping high school musical homage to the 1950s toplining John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John epitomizes nostalgia like few movies can with top pop tunes and hip-wiggling choreography. Basically, the Bronte Woodard screenplay of the Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey stage musical recycles the venerable boy gets girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl back formula. Of course, in Hollywood, everybody is eternally youthful, even when they are well past their high school prime. Rydell High is the setting for all these shenanigans, with Principal McGee (Eva Arden) presiding over the likes of Danny Zuko (John Travolta), Rizzo (Stockard Channing), Kenickie (Jeff Conaway), Frenchy, (Didi Conn), Eugene (Eddie Deezen), and Tom (Lorenzo Lamas). The action opens to the strains of Love Is A Many Splendid Thing on the beach as the summer sunset sets on a whirlwind romance between Danny and Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) who has to return to Australia. Little does she know that she will not be going back down under and winds up at Rydell High where she encounters Danny. Like most teenagers in high school, the guys have to posture when they are not running their combs through their grease-soaked coiffures. Danny leads a black-leather jacket clad gang called the T-Birds and their sworn enemies are the scorpions. This fierce rivalry smolders throughout the action while Kenickie takes an old jalopy and overhauls it. Kenickie and his squeeze Rizzo eventually break up when she fears that she may be pregnant and one of the Scorpions (Dennis Stewart) challenges Kenickie to a drag race for pink slips, i.e. ownership papers of the car that loses. At the last minute, Kenickie has to back and Danny takes the wheel. Just as Sandy and Danny are warming up to each other, Rydell High becomes the site of a nationally televised dance contest with Vince Fontaine (Edd Byrnes) acting as the Emcee. Danny takes Sandy but he winds up dancing with feisty Cha Cha DiGregorio (Annette Charles) and winning the contest. Sandy breaks up with Danny, but they are back together for the finale. The chemistry between Travolta and Newton-John is sizzling with their singing finale as a corker. GREASE pays tribute to many seminal 50s films, such as "Ben-Hur," during an automobile race. The performances are fine and the music is memorable.