GREASE
Randal Kleiser's energetic but dense
and Disney-fied adaptation of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's bawdy
1972 Broadway hit about high school in the '50s was the last big
movie musical to capture the public's imagination, but it's certainly
not the best. Grease lacks the satirical insight that made
Singin' in the Rain such a magnificent sendup of early
Hollywood because it basically reimagines the '50s as a theme
park attraction; it has about as much depth as a Happy Days
episode. And it also shares with that series a disregard for depicting
the '50s with authenticity, which American Graffiti has
in spades: while the performers on Happy Days looked nothing
like people from the era — dig that I-was-an-extra-on-Corvette
Summer haircut on Chachi — Grease's biggest boo-boo
is the casting of actors too old to play teenagers. However, John
Travolta makes for a terrific leading man, blessed with both charisma
and comic timing, and the picture is spiced up by amusing cameos
by '50s icons Eve Arden, Frankie Avalon, Edd Byrnes and Sid Caesar,
who plays well off of Travolta in a hilarious nonmusical sequence
that has anti-jock Danny Zuko trying out for different high-school
sports. Grease is fun escapist fare, but it's also '50s
nostalgia without much edge or meaning. It's essentially for people
too dim to fully appreciate Rebel Without a Cause or American
Graffiti.
© 1999 Jim Aquino