Let’s get this out of the way right damn now — Grease 2 is a severely underrated movie.
I don’t expect many of you to agree. In fact, I expect you to quote-tweet me into oblivion without reading the column, per standard internet protocol. But as a musical theatre kid who grew up obsessed with Grease (side note: where were my parents), here’s the basis of my argument:
If you measure Grease 2 solely by whether it’s a worthy extension of its blockbuster predecessor, you’re probably missing out on what makes it great. The question is not whether this is a good sequel. The question is whether you’re ready to embrace a movie-musical so brazenly absurd it’s somehow about bowling AND motorcycles AND being so in love with someone you adopt a secret identity and pray they don’t recognize you in disguise.
For all its faults, and HOOOO boy, there are many, Grease 2’s cult status is going strong 40 years after it bombed at the box office for the unforgivable crime of not being Grease. It was already a tall order to try to follow what was then the highest-grossing musical film of all time — but they also had to do it within three years and without most of the people who made it such a success. It didn’t help that director Patricia Birch, who had choreographed the Broadway musical and original film, was forced to start filming Grease 2 with an unfinished script. Production was “rushed, frantic and unorganized,” and the end result was a movie that fell far short of its predecessor critically and commercially.
It was also a movie with catchy musical numbers, solid staging, imaginative choreography and plenty of sweet, sweet Paramount money ($11 million, to be exact, nearly twice the budget of the original film). And who needs a “focused plot” or “believable romantic leads” or “an ending that isn’t utterly insane” when you’ve got a classroom of 30-year-old actors with crow’s feet singing about the wonders of reproduction?
It’s time to grow up and stop pretending this movie is trash when we all know in our hearts it’s an absolute triumph and here’s why: