Grease is great summer fun
GREASE - Westmount Square and Fairview
Produced by Robert Stigwood and Allan Carr directed by Randal Kleiser; screenplay by Bronte Woodward: adaptation by Allan Carr: based on the musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Kasey; starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, and Stockard Channing.
By JULIA MASKOULIS of The Gazette
Travolta-struck teenagers have been awaiting the opening of ‘Grease’ like the H-brews have been awaiting the arrival of the Messiah, certain not only that it will come, but that it will bring deliverance.
Well, the day of judgment has arrived, atud the word is burn. Yes, burn. Anyone who still has John Travolta fever will find their temperature not cooling, but rising.
Others may find their temperature rising at the blatant commercialism and the calculated hysteria built into this send-up of the stage mu sical “Grease”, which has been playing on Broadway for over three years.
They may be offended at the fever-pitch of the film, its quick scenaric successions which speed by like super-expensive television commercials, hypnotizing you, hooking you. And it’s great summer fun.
Expensive, it is also - six million dollars went into making the film. And it has all of Travolta’s delicious hip-movements from Saturday Night Fever but none of that film’s forthrightness and its social message.
The plot of the film has been slightly altered from the stage version to accommodate Newton-John’s British accent. In the film she’s Sandy, a sugar’n spice Pollyana (flat-chested too), who comes from Australia to Rydell High School and confronts padded brassieres, rollers, lipstick, and Danny Zukko (Travolta) all within a very short time.
She takes until the end of the movie to get around to the brassieres and the lipstick, but she takes to Zukko pronto and they began to go out. The movie centers around the social life of Rydell High pajama parties, school dances, drive-ins, and the local malt shop.
There’s a Ken Russell touch to the excessive and outrageous costumes in the film, many of which are far from realistic, especially in silvery dream sequences with a Man From Glad look to them.
Randal Kleiser’s big-league directorial debut gets out the comic in Travolta. Travolta hams it up and looks good doing it, especially in one sequence when he tries to go straight and joins the athletics department. This scene is worth the whole movie. He goes from wrestling to basketball to baseball, and every time he loses he tries to beat up his opponent.
Newton-John is a wispy, frail creature who seems to have been perfectly cast for the part. Nobody could look more innocent with those blue eyes and blond hair. Her strength, however, is her VOLUT
The choreography is very Broadway-ish, with the first few numbers looking as if they were inspired by West Side Story This effect wears out, however, and they get (intentionally?) chaotic as the film goes on.
Some of the minor performances were excellent -Eve Arden as the school principal, Frankie Avalon as himself, Joan Blondell as a waitress. Sid Caesar as the coach.