Is "Grease" Still the Word?

Part of me can’t help but wonder what’s with the enduring popularity of Randal Kleiser’s (The Blue Lagoon) 1978 adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease. While I’m just as big a fan of the songs as the next person (you just try getting ditties as catchy as “Summer Nights” or “You’re the One that I Want” out of your head as see how you do) the movie sort of leaves me oddly cold and for that reason I’ve never been seen doing cartwheels for it.

Not that I hate the film by any stretch of the imagination. The first time I saw it as a kid I was totally positive I would grow up to be just like Sandra Dee (both versions, she was great both prim and proper and as a leather jacket-clad bad girl), it not mattering a lick that I looked nothing like Olivia Newton-John in the slightest. I also thought that “Beauty School Dropout” production number was just to die for, and I still believe to this day one of the reasons I became a writer and not a hair dresser is because of the look of abstract failure on Didi Conn’s face as Frankie Avalon lovingly sang to her.

But I do think Kleiser’s staging of the dance numbers is clunky and not always as good as I wanted it to be, that central competition nowhere near as exciting as it should have been. I also think the performances are way too far all over the map, and while I wanted to be just like Sandra Dee doesn’t mean I also thought Newton-John was all that great portraying her.

The one big exception to all of the above? Stockard Channing. How this one-time Oscar nominee (1994’s Six Degrees of Separation) has not become a bigger and far more lauded star is still way beyond me. She’s stupendous here as Betty Rizzo, stealing every scene she’s in even from box office superstar John Travolta, himself fresh off of his success breaking hearts in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever. I can’t get enough of her in this, her rendition of “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” positively heartbreaking.



I bring all this up because Paramount Pictures is bringing Grease back for another go-around with a Sing-Along version to hit theatres in July. SIFF is getting to premier this version of this new print of the film, showing it to audiences for the very first time on Saturday, June 12 at 3:45 p.m. Even though I’m not a huge fan I’m pretty positive I’ll be attending all the same, if for no other reason to relieve my own Sandra Dee wannabe fantasies in a movie theatre for the very first time.