If It Smells It Must Be Grease

thanks to Kay

By Cliff Radel, Enquirer Pop Music Critic

Grease smells. The stench of rank amateurism, rancid TV specials and putrid shows like Welcome Back, Kotter permeates the entire 110 minutes of this abomination.The opening scene portends the malodorous nature of this film. Surf pounds to the tune of Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. A boy and girl frolic on a rocky beach. Zoom in for a close-up.

THE GIRL asks the boy. Danny, is this the end? Please Danny. Please say yes. Abort this disaster.

But no. Danny doesn't have the heart or the good sense to spare the viewer the forthcoming agony. Euthanasia is out of the question. So, he replies: Of course not, it's only the beginning. Say it isn't so Danny.

The dialogue goes downhill from there. Bronte Woodard wrote the screen-play for Grease from Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's musical set in that rock and roll decade, the 1950s. Woodard's credits do not say so, but from the flatness of his stupefyingly dull script he has to be one of the authors of the Dick and Jane series:

See Danny, in the form of John Travolta, and Sandy, as played by Olivia Newton-John, part on the beach. Summertime is over. She lives in Australia. He lives in California. 'Danny is nice. Sandy is nicer.'

SCENE CHANGE.

Here is Rydell High School. It is Danny's school. He is standing at the door. He is smoking a cigarette. It is the first day of classes.

Oh, look. There are Danny's friends. They are the T-Birds. Danny greets one boy by sticking his knee in the T-Bird's groin. See the T-Bird wince. Here comes a girl. It is Sandy. Her parents moved to California.

Days pass.

Sandy meets Danny again. They fight. They get back together. They fight. They get back together. They fight. They get back together. In between he wins a drag race. She loses her sweetness.

Cut to the final scene. The Graduation Carnival.

Watch everybody dance a routine even the Rockettes wouldn't do. Sandy and Danny get in a car. They fly away.

The end. Cue the credits. Pass the air-sickness bag.

Grease is Olivia Newton-John's first American film. I hope it's her last. The world does not need another Doris Day. One mousy-voiced, dishwater blonde actress who can't act, can't sing, can't dance and can't pass for 36 much less 16 is enough.

To hide her bounty of wrinkles. Newton-John wears enough shades of blusher, cake makeup and rouge to qualify for a commercial touting the many colors of Super KemTone paint. Movie makeup can work wonders. It cannot, however, perform miracles. And that is what it would take to make Newton-John, 29, look Sandy's age, 16.

Director Randal Kleiser tries to help matters by having the camera go out of focus every time it nears her face. It is a waste of time. The furrows around her mouth are too deep.

JOHN TRAVOLTA'S career takes a giant step backward with Grease. The promise he showed in Saturday Night Fever has been broken. But don't stay up all night and bray at the moon in mourning. The promise wasn't that big to begin with.

Travolta's Grease performance puts him in a category with Barbra Streisand. Both are one-character actors. No matter what role Travolta has, whenever he opens his mouth or jerks his head, out pops Vinnie Barbarino.

The supporting characters, with the exception of Stockard Channing, are so moronic they make the Three Stooges look like a trio of Sir Laurence Oliviers. Channing, whose weathered face gives her the appearance of someone who has been a high-school senior for 14 years, manages to make something out of her part with some wily grimaces and dynamic singing.

Grease is showing at the Showcase Cinemas. Those who abhor lines and crowded theaters do not have to worry. The blackouts between scene changes mean one thing. This fetid film was made with TV in mind.

Grease calls to mind George Santayana's famous sentence: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Those who make nostalgia films like Grease should be condemned.