Hot Travolta Makes Grease Crackle
By Candice Russell, Herald Staff Writer
High school was never as much fun as Grease makes out it out to be. No matter, for in humorously fooling with youthful fears and fantasies, the movie version of the long-running stage musical is a slam-bang, bona-fide smash.
MOVIE REVIEW
Grease, which kicked off the nationwide nostalgia for the fabulous ’50s, is an affectionate satire of those times and the era’s exaggerated types.
A large reason for the film’s success is the piercing presence of John Travolta. He can do no wrong as tough-guy Danny Zuko, the archetypal cool dude of the 1950s. Stepping out on the dance floor with as much style as he displayed in Saturday Night Fever, Travolta steals the picture away from a gymnasium full of strolling, bebopping, jitterbugging characters.
He gets huge laughs from little things, like loosening up with a baseball bat. He sings well. And he can make girls in a theater swoon when his eyes turn glistening and fawn-like at the sight of his sweet-heart Sandy, played with endearing innocence by Olivia Newton-John in her screen debut.
GALVANIZED BY Travolta Grease makes all the right moves. Simply, it’s the story of a summer beach romance between good girl Sandy and greaser Danny that ends when she has to go back to Australia. Little does he realize that in the fail the girl of his dreams will also be going to his school, Rydell High.
Danny is ecstatic at seeing Sandy on campus until his buddies make him feel uncool for showing that he obviously cares. In an effort to win back their approval, he puts her down and she winds up dating a blond football player in retaliation.
The first cigarette, the first drink, the first petting at the drive-in are all here and so is a cute story about how two unlikely young people finally get together. After challenging Danny to get into sports, Sandy learns the value of changing her Pollyanna-ish ways by hanging out with the Pink Ladies, female counterparts of greasers who are worldly-wise by comparison.
IN THE film’s nifty finale, the lovers have compromised, with Danny in a letterman’s sweater and Sandy in skin-tight black pants, sweater and spiked heels. Va-va-voom, as they would have said back then, for the way these two sexily slither.
With a script by Bronte Woodard and an adaptation by co-producer Allan Carr, Grease comes to admirable terms with both the heart of the stage original and the very different demands of “opening up” the property as a movie. An example: not bound by a proscenium stage, the camera moves to a dance sequence on the bleachers, with Danny giving his version of what happened with Sandy on those balmy nights at the beach.
Then the action cuts to Sandy, as she recounts her version to the girls among the outdoor lunch tables.
Stockard Channing, a neglected comedienne, does well as the cynical Rizzo. Jeff Conaway likably plays her boyfriend Kenickie, a rail-thin figure in denim and leather, the uniform of the times.
USING MUCH of the score from the stage version by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, Grease also features the hit “You’re the One That I Want” by Travolta and Newton-John, among other new songs. The mood of the film’s songs is irrepressibly upbeat, the rhythms infectious. Best is Grease, composed by Barry Gibb and sung by Frankie Valli over the opening cartoon credits it’s a sizzling, disco-flavored number.
Patricia Birch, who was also responsible for the zippy choreography in the original Broadway show, has taken care to make these spirited numbers compete with anything in the discos today. The urge to get up and boogie along with the kids is hard to control.
Personalities who were emblematic of the 1950s are strewn throughout Grease. There’s Edd (“Kookie” of TV’s “Sunset Strip”) Byrnes, playing Vince Fontaine, unctuous host of the high school dance. Eve Arden, video’s “Our Miss Brooks,” is back on the campus as the uppity principal, with daffy Dody Goodman as her assistant. None other than Sid Caesar plays the coach, though his role could have been better written.
Best of all, though, is Frankie Avalon, looking as if time hadn’t stopped since his voice cracked more than 20 years ago. Dressed all in white, he has a wonderful turn doing the fantasy song Beauty School Dropout, a lavish production number with girls wearing pyramids of silver curlers and hair-styling smocks.
Newcomer Randal Kleiser directs the film with as much energy as his cast continually exhibits. The pace doesn’t lag for an instant. One could wish, however, for less frenetic camera movement when Travolta and company cut loose at the dance. He is pure charisma, whatever he does.
GREASE is rated PG, It contains some obscenities.