MY MOVIE SHELF: Grease 2

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 245 Days to go: 250

Movie #132: Grease 2

There was never any way Grease 2 would live up to the beloved reputation of Grease. It’s sillier, stupider, and the music isn’t as great. But it does have its merits. I didn’t even find out Grease 2 existed until I was in high school, and I watched it a bunch after that, but for a long time with an element of a hidden shame. I mean, it’s just that cheesy. (And this coming from the girl who loudly and openly likes a LOT of cheesy movies.) When I got to college, however, I discovered there was this whole underground cult of Grease 2 fans — one of the girls who lived down the hall from me in my first dorm could even do Michelle Pfeiffer’s “Cool Rider” dance perfectly (the end where she hops and spins and spells “Cool Rider”). That was huge for me, because it allowed me let my Grease 2 freak flag fly a little more openly. And once I found out Drew Barrymore loved it as well, I voiced my affection with pride. (Drew, call me!)

Grease 2 attempts to turn the tables on Grease by having it be the guy who’s the outsider — Maxwell Caulfield playing Sandy’s cousin Michael Carrington — while the girl (Pfeiffer as Stephanie Zinone) is the super cool one he’s changing for. Some characters are there to bridge the gap between the two films — Didi Conn as Frenchy (finishing her high school degree for some reason), Eve Arden as Principal McGee, Dody Goodman as Blanche, Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun, and Dennis Stewart gets a slightly bigger role as the same rival gang leader from the first movie, only this time they’re on motorcycles — but mostly the cast of characters are new and the story is its own.

See, Stephanie dumped T-Bird leader Johnny (Adrian Zmed) over the summer because “there’s got to be more to life than making out,” and she’s “tired of being someone’s chick.” But Pink Ladies are supposedly required to be available to T-Birds, even though T-Birds chase around whomever they want, particularly the ladies who work at the grocery store (don’t ask). Meanwhile, Michael is smitten with Stephanie and keeps asking her out, but she brushes him off because he’s not a “dream on a mean machine with hell in his eyes.” She wants a cool rider, see, and “if he’s cool enough, he can burn me through and through. Whoa-oh-oh.” (If it takes forever, then she’ll wait forever.) “No ordinary boy, no ordinary boy is gonna do. I want a rider that’s cool.” Those might seem like the most ridiculous lyrics ever sung, but Michelle Pfeiffer really pulls them off (everyone who was so shocked and thrilled at Pfeiffer’s singing in The Fabulous Baker Boys obviously never saw Grease 2), and so Michael is convinced of his next move: in order to get Stephanie, he must get a motorcycle.

Luckily, the T-Birds this time around are openly stupid (no more mocking the jocks) and pay Michael to write essays for them. So he saves up money and buys a bike and before you know it he’s “a devil in skin-tight leather.” He shows up at odd times — bowling night, or wherever — all mysteriously clad in his head-to-toe leather ensemble, along with helmet and goggles, so nobody knows who he is. But he can jump cop cars with apparently no ramp whatsoever and Stephanie thinks he’s hot as all get out.

Johnny doesn’t like this development, and Pink Lady Paulette (Lorna Luft, aka Judy Garland’s OTHER daughter), who’s been seeing Johnny since school started, gets really mad at him for using her while he’s still getting jealous over Stephanie. The T-Birds chase the mysterious biker over Dead Man’s Curve on the night of the talent show and they don’t know if he jumped it or what, but he’s disappeared. (This is particularly dumb, because Michael is the talent show’s piano player, so if he didn’t show up someone would notice, but the talent show goes off without a hitch until Stephanie zones out during “Girl For All Seasons” and makes up her own song on the spot about her broken heart — it wins, of course.) Michael doesn’t show up until the next day or several days later or whenever the end-of-year luau is. He’s dressed as the cool rider, then reveals his true self, and Stephanie is thrilled. Also, he becomes a member of the T-Birds. The end.

Silly, like I said, but it has merits. Sixties heartthrobs Tab Hunter and Connie Stevens are there as canoodling teachers Mr. Stuart and Miss Mason, and the “Reproduction” song Mr. Stuart starts and the students finish is pretty funny. (“Make my stamen go berserk.”) There’s also a part where Louis (Peter Frechette) tricks Sharon (Maureen Teefy) into believing nuclear war has started to get her to sleep with him, which is pretty underhanded if you think about it but it’s so dumb and she ends up foiling him anyway, so you can just laugh. Paulette’s little sister Dolores (Pamela Adlon) is also a highlight, mostly because she gripes about how “the [Pink Lady] code stinks” and it pisses her off. And Christopher McDonald (of Thelma & Louise and Happy Gilmore, among others) plays a T-Bird named Goose and he is HUGE compared to everyone else. Like, super tall. But if that’s not enough for you, there is also an entire musical number about bowling. (“We’re gonna scor-or-ore tonight!”)

See? Merits.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Grease

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 246 Days to go: 250

Movie #131: Grease

“Grease is the word, is the word that you heard. It’s got groove, it’s got meaning. Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion. Grease is the way we are feeling.”

As a very, very young girl watching Grease on TV, there was no doubt in my mind it was the coolest thing to ever exist. (Not kidding, Sha Na Na was my all-time favorite band AND show when I was in pre-school. I once tried to duplicate the freeze-frame at the end of every Sha Na Na episode by holding myself in the air against the arm of the couch. It didn’t work.) I watched the movie every single time it was on, which, in the ’80s, was a LOT. There was nothing I wanted to be more than a Pink Lady dating a T-Bird, and I didn’t even recognize at the time that there was a T-Bird hierarchy. Any T-Bird would’ve done. I even used to think Patty Simcox’s (Susan Buckner) signature dance move of little kicks while raising the roof was pretty slick, and I used to show it off to my mom. Most of all, though, I wanted to live in those songs.

When I was in high school I worked at a grocery store as a cashier, and they played a mix of the same few dozen songs every day, so on a long shift you’d hear everything at least once. One day during a lull, “Hopelessly Devoted To You” came over the sound system. I was standing there daydreaming and “woke up” near the end of the song to realize I’d been singing the whole thing, that I apparently knew every word by heart and didn’t even have to pay attention to knock it out. That was how deeply a part of me Grease had become, and that was more than twenty years ago. It’s only gotten worse.

As a kid, it was really rare for “Greased Lightning” to make it past the censors and onto the TV broadcast, but it did every now and then. I remember being mad at it for being there and screwing up the movie as I remembered it. As I got older I got more used to it, but I was still in college when I realized how racy the lyrics were. I was beyond college when I realized how sexualized the rest of the movie is. I mean, I always just thought it was fun and sweet and full of great music. I didn’t actually pay attention to any of the dialogue, even if I had it memorized. It was kind of shocking to me how risqué it had been all along. The “sloppy seconds” remark, the broken condom, the pregnancy scare, the lewd dancing at school, and whether or not anyone’s “jugs are bigger than Annette’s.” Not to mention that “Greased Lightning” isn’t the only questionable song on the soundtrack, in case you’ve never listened to the lyrics of “Sandra Dee” or “Summer Nights.” But even after being sort of scandalized after the fact at how openly sexual Grease is, it’s still the coolest little musical in my heart. I love it so much.

I rooted for Danny and Sandy (John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John), obviously, but I also rooted for Rizzo and Kenickie (Stockard Channing and Jeff Conaway) and Putzie and Jan (Kelly Ward and Jamie Donnelly). Doody and Frenchy (Barry Pearl and Didi Conn) were fine, but I definitely thought Marty (Dinah Manoff) would move onto better things than Sonny (Michael Tucci). I have no idea why there were “Scorpions” with “turf,” but I remember finding the “gang rivalry” very tense when I was young and utterly laughable now (except I still think it’s scary and dangerous to put blades on your hubcaps). And I didn’t get why Danny had a flying car at the end, but that’s because the censors always cut out “Greased Lightning.” I also think it’s hilarious that these T-Bird bozos made so much fun of how dumb jocks were. This will be especially funny in Grease 2.

Some of my favorite parts now are the little throwaway jokes, like when Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun gives his pep rally speech and says how when they win they’re going to come back and ring the victory bell, “Like we always wanted to.” Or how Blanche (Dody Goodman) pulled a tiny little pencil nub out of her hair. Or how Principal McGee (Eve Arden) closes her motivational end-of-year address with “or even a Vice President Nixon” and Doody sits up a little straighter.

I also relate to it. I remember feeling too goody-two-shoes and pressured a lot of the time. And I also felt tough like Rizzo (who has really great legs, by the way). “There Are Worst Things I Could Do” is my absolute favorite song. And I like the silly parts too. To this day I sing the Ipana toothpaste song. I even modified it to use when brushing my toddler’s teeth.

Grease will always be a part of me, a part of my soul, a big piece of my heart. I can’t imagine ever not loving it completely. It just makes me so totally happy. Who can find fault with that?

So remember, “If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.”