Quick recap: A movie made in the 70s, set in the 50s about a bunch of 18 year olds played by 30 year olds. And there is a lot of singing.

wrong grease, but best Simpsons episode

Fun (?) fact: Because everything has to be a conspiracy now, someone from Tumblr theorized that Sandy had a near drowning experience on the beach at the beginning of the movie and the resulting scenes are all hallucinations, ending with the ascent into the sky.

My thoughts: Look, I don’t HATE Grease. Hate is such a strong word. And you could even say I mildly enjoyed it this time, compared to when I watch it in high school (strange, I know). But it definitely didn’t endear itself to me by any stretch of the imagination and I’ll be perfectly satisfied if I never have to watch it again.

When I watched Grease the first time around, I originally disliked it because everyone else loved it, kind of like my feelings toward Amelie. Not that I’m all that well versed on musicals, mind you, but Grease is still beginner level to me. This time around, I couldn’t really find anything that stood out as the reason to dislike the movie, except for Olivia Newton-John. My money was on hating John Travolta, but he grew on me, and I daresay I even liked him by the end. But Sandy? Nope. She was too goody-goody, but even worse, she played it up so the audience would think she was just sweet. That doesn’t work when you are already 30, though. Olivia Newton-John and her character were just trying too hard and it annoyed me. The other characters annoyed me as well, except maybe Frenchie, whom I was rather fond of.

The music was catchy enough, but I was surprised that it didn’t stick in my head the next day. I’m the kind of person who gets songs stuck in my head often. Hell, I wake up every morning with the Double Mint jingle running through my head so you’d think Summer Nights would get in there at some point, but no. I really did enjoy the numbers as well as the dancing but for whatever reason, it just didn’t do anything for me. As mentioned before, everything just annoyed me. It was like everyone really wanted to capture the ‘real’ high school experience in the least real way possible. I can say I’ve evolved to no longer outright disliking the movie, but it will forever be a ‘meh’ in my book.

Final review: 3/5

Up next: the Ice Storm