Here we go then.
Director: Randal Kleiser
Writters: Jim Jacobs & Warren Casey (Original musical)
Bronté Woodard (Screenplay)
Allan Carr (Adaptation)
Let's first start off with the negatives because...personally I think there's a fair amount of it in this. First of all, the guys in this are just total pigs, and I mean fucking disgusting pigs. Danny (John Travolta), starts off this film by destroying a sandcastle...lead as you mean to go on I guess. The boys in leather then proceed to bully a geek stereotype named Eugene, drop a dead frog in a girls bag, look up another girls skirt, acting "too cool" in front of friends, finally getting a date and acting as though they don't really wanna be there, looking at another girls booty when dancing with their date, spiking the punch, elbowing their girlfriend then proposing to her only to then try and cop a feel, knocking your pal out with a slight bump from a car door etc. That's a pretty big list but there are about 5 of the leather guys..I think, I didn't count, if it's any different I'll edit it in. I didn't even mention the coach who enjoys the word "primed" too much, that butt head who sings Beauty School Drop Out or Vince Fontaine, who these days would be branded as a predator or pervert considering he quite openly messes around with a young high school girl. The guys in this are just gross, you can blame it on the time period this is set in but damn, if this was made and set in the present day, there would be more controversy than the 2016 Ghost Busters movie.
The problems didn't just lie with the guys, the women were also had their share of shitty behaviour, starting with the headmistress, shouldn't she have had her paperwork ready way before the start of term? I don't care how lax the system would be back then, there is no excuse for not keeping your paperwork up to date. Also, how did she not have Sandy fill in those forms before school when she would have met with her parents to get her enrolled in the school? Wouldn't that be more effective than making a new student who is obviously going to be very lost and confused on her first day late for her first class? I don't know whether that's a real thing that happens within the American education system but it just seems a little weird to me. Not like I know much about moving schools, only ever did it once when I was six but whatever. Aside from that, near enough every woman in this is portrayed as a bitch, or an idiot. The only strong female character in this is Rizzo, and she makes some stupid decisions. Let's start with Sandy, she's an idiot. No other way about it, she's pretty much just some silly girl who fawns over and constantly forgives Danny when all he does is act like a tit towards her. Then there's Frenchy, another idiot, she might be cute but she's portrayed as a ditz who drops out of two schools, the first time because she wants to pursue her passion and the second time because she's struggling. There isn't really a lot of screen time dedicated to her to really get a grasp on any sort of personality she has. Then there's Jan. Jan is a horrible friend who tells her best friends secrets the second their back is turned. Never trust Jan. Finally there's Rizzo, a strong confident woman who has unprotected sex with apparently multiple guys. That's honestly so stupid I don't know what else I can say about that. She also thinks she's pregnant because her period was late and rather than wait it out a few more days she goes and tells her backstabbing friend Jan. These are both crazy stupid moves made by a character who's made out to be strong, smart and assertive.
Going back to my point about Frenchy not getting enough screen time to get a feel for her personality, looking back on my notes it seems as though that statement applies to all the main characters in this, I never felt any sort of connection to these characters because they were just sort of stock characters and nothing they ever did made them seem anything more than just stock characters.
Another issue was the music. Now I'm not saying that the music in this was terrible, far from it. I loved every piece in this film, the problem was that sometimes the numbers felt as if they were well integrated in places such as Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee fitting into the scene well but Greased Lightning and a couple others felt very...stage production-y. Not that I'm against that but it felt as if the people working on adapting this from the stage just couldn't really pick a lane on what they wanted to do with the numbers. Like they really wanted some parts to be worked in nicely but then forgot about others and just kinda threw them as they would have been on stage. Final issue with the music was that the number Hopelessly Devoted To You seemed vague enough to be played on the radio as some sort of promotion for the film, like Can't Stop The Feeling by Justin Timblerlake for the 2016 movie Trolls. It unintentionally feels manipulative and as much as some people love this song, I just couldn't get into it.
To end the negative portion I'm gonna talk about the pacing. The whole thing felt very rushed, I'm not sure why but at near enough every point in this film I kept thinking "wait...how much time's passed?" I mean, the film played out the way you'd think this sort of thing would but there just didn't seem to be any indication of the passage of time from the start to the end.
I'm all about fairness when talking about something and so I'm gonna talk about the positives because despite my bitching there is good in this. The choreography is very good in this and Patricia Birch and Carol Culver did a great job of making the big musical numbers more memorable by the choreography which accompanied them. The standout choreography would be at the school dance, I mean yeah big group choreographed dance scenes in a school dance scene are a little unrealistic but it's a musical so who even cares, there's group choreography everywhere, get over it. I mean unless you watch CinemaSins a lot and find yourself nitpicking like them then...I guess don't get over it because nitpicking is pretty fun. Just do it for fun though and don't apply it to your personal life because that's gonna make look like a dick and that's not good for anyone. I got way off topic there, moving on.
I LOVE the language used in this film, with things like "Dingleberries on parade" "Peachy keen" "Divoon" and many more just..oddly beautiful lines are what makes this film enjoyable. My personal favourites would definitely be "Peachy Keen" and "Dingleberries on parade" like...can we make those a thing? They're just lovely. They seem as though they're plucked from the 50's but it's more like how the 70's would see the 50's. I personally don't know the language of the 50's but that's definitely not it, but maybe it could become the language of 2017. Crazier things have happened I mean...look at the state of 2016, what could be worse?
I also loved the fashion in this film, I don't know about other people but I would definitely wear pretty much everything anyone wore in this, it came across as both stereotypical 50's and the 70's imagines the 50's style and I even saw things that I've recently seen in Primark and H&M in there. Hopefully some of the stuff I see in this will bleed into the modern fashion because it is just lovely. Good job costume department.
Finally, for as much as I bitched about the characters I really did like them. I mean I really identified with Rizzo's take no shit attitude and Frenchy's slight dimness and commitment to following her passion and Sandy's stupid determination to constantly fall back into Danny's arms without him giving her a reason to forgive him for any shit he pulls. To say that the guys were disgusting pigs is for me an honest statement but the way they treat each other is pretty much how my friends and I treat each other, it's probably not healthy or very nice but we're not people who enjoy showing emotion. I say friends like I have more than 2 that I have any sort of regular contact with. Hahahahaha.
If you saw the notes I made on Grease you'd think I absolutely can't stand this film, I don't, I've just tend to find myself finding all the negatives and very few positives in things, call me a pessimist if you like. Actually thinking about it I probably am a pessimist...damn I'm all over the place with this. Despite how my notes might look I did enjoy this film enough to not...dislike it, I mean it's just Ok. It's nothing special but it's not anything terrible either, it's just...Ok.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this particular film please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
The problems didn't just lie with the guys, the women were also had their share of shitty behaviour, starting with the headmistress, shouldn't she have had her paperwork ready way before the start of term? I don't care how lax the system would be back then, there is no excuse for not keeping your paperwork up to date. Also, how did she not have Sandy fill in those forms before school when she would have met with her parents to get her enrolled in the school? Wouldn't that be more effective than making a new student who is obviously going to be very lost and confused on her first day late for her first class? I don't know whether that's a real thing that happens within the American education system but it just seems a little weird to me. Not like I know much about moving schools, only ever did it once when I was six but whatever. Aside from that, near enough every woman in this is portrayed as a bitch, or an idiot. The only strong female character in this is Rizzo, and she makes some stupid decisions. Let's start with Sandy, she's an idiot. No other way about it, she's pretty much just some silly girl who fawns over and constantly forgives Danny when all he does is act like a tit towards her. Then there's Frenchy, another idiot, she might be cute but she's portrayed as a ditz who drops out of two schools, the first time because she wants to pursue her passion and the second time because she's struggling. There isn't really a lot of screen time dedicated to her to really get a grasp on any sort of personality she has. Then there's Jan. Jan is a horrible friend who tells her best friends secrets the second their back is turned. Never trust Jan. Finally there's Rizzo, a strong confident woman who has unprotected sex with apparently multiple guys. That's honestly so stupid I don't know what else I can say about that. She also thinks she's pregnant because her period was late and rather than wait it out a few more days she goes and tells her backstabbing friend Jan. These are both crazy stupid moves made by a character who's made out to be strong, smart and assertive.
Going back to my point about Frenchy not getting enough screen time to get a feel for her personality, looking back on my notes it seems as though that statement applies to all the main characters in this, I never felt any sort of connection to these characters because they were just sort of stock characters and nothing they ever did made them seem anything more than just stock characters.
Another issue was the music. Now I'm not saying that the music in this was terrible, far from it. I loved every piece in this film, the problem was that sometimes the numbers felt as if they were well integrated in places such as Look At Me I'm Sandra Dee fitting into the scene well but Greased Lightning and a couple others felt very...stage production-y. Not that I'm against that but it felt as if the people working on adapting this from the stage just couldn't really pick a lane on what they wanted to do with the numbers. Like they really wanted some parts to be worked in nicely but then forgot about others and just kinda threw them as they would have been on stage. Final issue with the music was that the number Hopelessly Devoted To You seemed vague enough to be played on the radio as some sort of promotion for the film, like Can't Stop The Feeling by Justin Timblerlake for the 2016 movie Trolls. It unintentionally feels manipulative and as much as some people love this song, I just couldn't get into it.
To end the negative portion I'm gonna talk about the pacing. The whole thing felt very rushed, I'm not sure why but at near enough every point in this film I kept thinking "wait...how much time's passed?" I mean, the film played out the way you'd think this sort of thing would but there just didn't seem to be any indication of the passage of time from the start to the end.
I'm all about fairness when talking about something and so I'm gonna talk about the positives because despite my bitching there is good in this. The choreography is very good in this and Patricia Birch and Carol Culver did a great job of making the big musical numbers more memorable by the choreography which accompanied them. The standout choreography would be at the school dance, I mean yeah big group choreographed dance scenes in a school dance scene are a little unrealistic but it's a musical so who even cares, there's group choreography everywhere, get over it. I mean unless you watch CinemaSins a lot and find yourself nitpicking like them then...I guess don't get over it because nitpicking is pretty fun. Just do it for fun though and don't apply it to your personal life because that's gonna make look like a dick and that's not good for anyone. I got way off topic there, moving on.
I LOVE the language used in this film, with things like "Dingleberries on parade" "Peachy keen" "Divoon" and many more just..oddly beautiful lines are what makes this film enjoyable. My personal favourites would definitely be "Peachy Keen" and "Dingleberries on parade" like...can we make those a thing? They're just lovely. They seem as though they're plucked from the 50's but it's more like how the 70's would see the 50's. I personally don't know the language of the 50's but that's definitely not it, but maybe it could become the language of 2017. Crazier things have happened I mean...look at the state of 2016, what could be worse?
I also loved the fashion in this film, I don't know about other people but I would definitely wear pretty much everything anyone wore in this, it came across as both stereotypical 50's and the 70's imagines the 50's style and I even saw things that I've recently seen in Primark and H&M in there. Hopefully some of the stuff I see in this will bleed into the modern fashion because it is just lovely. Good job costume department.
Finally, for as much as I bitched about the characters I really did like them. I mean I really identified with Rizzo's take no shit attitude and Frenchy's slight dimness and commitment to following her passion and Sandy's stupid determination to constantly fall back into Danny's arms without him giving her a reason to forgive him for any shit he pulls. To say that the guys were disgusting pigs is for me an honest statement but the way they treat each other is pretty much how my friends and I treat each other, it's probably not healthy or very nice but we're not people who enjoy showing emotion. I say friends like I have more than 2 that I have any sort of regular contact with. Hahahahaha.
If you saw the notes I made on Grease you'd think I absolutely can't stand this film, I don't, I've just tend to find myself finding all the negatives and very few positives in things, call me a pessimist if you like. Actually thinking about it I probably am a pessimist...damn I'm all over the place with this. Despite how my notes might look I did enjoy this film enough to not...dislike it, I mean it's just Ok. It's nothing special but it's not anything terrible either, it's just...Ok.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this particular film please go and support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray.
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