I've seen parts of this musical in the past and I'm mostly familiar with the songs, but I've never really gotten into it before so I'm happy I can finally say I've seen it. It's a fun movie too, I think I would have really loved it when I was younger because the songs are so catchy and the heightened reality/cheesiness of some of the sequences would have appealed to me more back then. Still I think this is a very enjoyable musical - very energetic and irreverent and the two leads are so endearing.
This musical has a great soundtrack, with the two songs written specifically for the film (Hopelessly Devoted and You're the One That I Want) being such highlights. For these Movie Musical posts I like to highlight a favorite sequence which usually includes my favorite song, but I was torn on this one, because definitely my favorite song from Grease is 'Beauty School Dropout' but 'Greased Lightning' was my favorite sequence from the film. It was such a cool scene - I loved that they transitioned to a fantasy setting in the middle. I do think the music sequences in general in this movie are more appealing than the scenes - there were some minorly awkward transitions from acting to singing and back out I thought.
I loved the two leads, they were both fantastic, although John Travolta's voice is noticeably weaker (oh! and I'm astonished that Olivia Newton-John was 30 when she did this movie!) It's obvious these actors aren't teenagers, but I thought they captured the exuberance of their age very well, and their romance was so sweet. Rizzo was a great character too - so sassy and she tries to be so tough - it seems like her backstory would have been great to explore more. I'm glad she gets a happy ending!
I was a bit surprised that this movie was like a year in the life of these students - I was always under the impression that it was really about Sandy and Danny, but I liked that the story branched out more to talk about some of the other students, and some issues likes teen sexuality. The whole Thunderbirds gang rivalry thing was a bit odd though - it seemed like it could be a really dangerous thing, but the film kept it just on this side of light-hearted. I mean that race on River Road was just so dangerous! And I felt sad that the car they spent so much time fixing up was almost immediately wrecked from that race. I did try to not be so practically-minded as I was watching! I guess these 'teens' just don't care about that sort of thing!
This is a fun movie musical - because of it's popularity and it's place in our culture, I can understand why it made the top 25 on AFI's list.
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