One Paragraph Movie Review: Grease

Two hundredth (!) film: Grease. It’s impossible to know how I actually feel about this film because I, like everyone within a decade either side of me, have seen it thousands and thousands of times. It has to be said that watching it as an adult is still completely and spastically enjoyable, once grumbled exception has been taken to the archaic sexual politics and borderline assault. I sit, and wonder why-ay-ay oh why, you left me, oh San-IT’S BECAUSE OF THE ATTEMPTED DATE RAPE, DANNY. The love story about two complete opposites changing everything about themselves to be together doesn’t makes sense. The casting of actors in their thirties to play teenagers — Stockard Channing had freckles drawn onto her face — doesn’t make sense. Sonny dragging Sandy out of the dance competition so Danny could win with Cha Cha DiGregorio (the best dancer at St Bernadette’s) doesn’t make sense. Loving this movie despite spending the 1980s fast-forwarding through four of its songs doesn’t make sense, but I do. It’s completely terrible in so, so many ways, not least because it made the making of Grease 2 — the best film ever made — possible, but it’s impossible to put it in the bin (like when Rizzo pushes Sandy and Patty Simcox into the bin during Summer Nights). Four and three quarter twenty-five cent insurance policies out of five.