That ‘Grease 2’ Cult Following, [Sort of] Explained

It was someday across the late Nineties after I realized Patricia Birch’s “Grease 2” (1982) has a cult following.

Along with fellow theater majors, dangerous film junkies and Gen-X contrarians, I stored assembly rational individuals who’d inform me they not solely beloved “Grease 2” however most well-liked it to the 1978 authentic.

It first occurred to me that the adoration of the John Travolta/ Olivia Newton-John starring “Grease” (1978) was starting to wane from my very own attendance of a “Grease”-themed pajama celebration I used to be invited to. It was a dorm room filled with younger girls, all dressed on pajamas, and my buddy and I, each freshmen, had been the one guys “cool sufficient” (extra like naïve sufficient) to attend.

Being single and hopelessly nerdy (and never hopelessly dedicated to anybody on the time), I couldn’t consider my luck in being requested to such an event. It turned out to be a “Grease” viewing celebration, by which the younger girls there, all in P.J.s, sang alongside and recited each single phrase uttered by anybody in “Grease” for the complete 110-minute operating time.

My buddy and I had been invited to the occasion as a result of we had been recognized to be theater individuals and singers. After 10 minutes of this, I needed to run screaming from the constructing, however hung in there. I didn’t attend any extra events in that dorm room ever once more.

Nevertheless, coincidentally, and never lengthy after that celebration, the place I used to be traumatized by teen women singing “Brush-a-brush-a-brush-a” together with Didi Conn in unison, I found that certainly one of my closest associates knew all of the phrases to “Cool Rider,” from the “Grease 2” soundtrack. The truth is, he knew each single music from that film, which he unashamedly referred to as his favourite musical.

It was not an remoted incident.

Now, as we strategy the fortieth anniversary of “Grease 2,” I believe the response might be extra of a welcome homecoming than the corridor of disgrace response it acquired in its day.

The plot: it’s 1961, a brand new 12 months at Rydell Excessive, by which the British, introverted Michael (Maxwell Caulfield) is crushing laborious on his classmate Stephanie (Michelle Pfeiffer). She’s a Pink Girl and insurgent who solely desires to be with a bike adept “cool rider;” Michael takes this beautiful far, as he adapts the character of a revved up biking stud by evening and nonetheless manages to be a highschool pupil through the day.

Bruce Wayne by no means had it so laborious.

“Grease 2” is like an underwhelming junior highschool class that takes pole place after a gaggle of extensively favored Seniors graduate and depart with legacy standing without end intact. I didn’t assume it was potential however that is all by some means cornier than the unique.

A extra of the identical contact it doesn’t fairly get away with: The youngsters are all performed by adults who seem of their mid-30s.

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If “Grease” comes throughout like a radical parody of ’50s/’60s biker flicks, Frankie & Annette seashore films and peachy-keen teen films, then “Grease 2” is an exhaustive tribute to “Grease.” It’s not simply that Travolta and Newton-John left footwear too huge for anybody else to fill however the query stays – why return to Rydell Excessive if the best children have all graduated?

With the absence of its impossibly iconic former leads, “Grease 2” doubles down on returning supporting gamers like Conn and Eve Arden…as a result of when you consider highschool, isn’t it the lecturers you all the time bear in mind with essentially the most fondness?

Really, no.

“Grease 2” arrived a 12 months into the creation of MTV, which not solely captured the zeitgeist of the world, altered the music trade and revolutionized brief movie music movies however managed to make conventional musicals seem like dinosaurs.

The ’80s had been largely a decade the place untraditional quasi-musicals, like “Purple Rain” (1984) and “True Tales” (1986) surfaced alongside MTV-branded dance musicals, like “Flashdance” (1983), “Footloose” (1984), “White Nights” (1985) and “Soiled Dancing” (1987).

Solely the offbeat “Little Store of Horrors” (1986), a minor hit at finest, managed to seek out an viewers with its conventional singing and dancing presentation within the traditional musical sense.

In any other case, “Grease 2” fell in with the corporate of “Can’t Cease the Music” and “Xanadu,” which had been each launched in 1980 and cited as the rationale for the creation for the Golden Razzie Awards.

The freshness of “Grease” wasn’t the one drawback for the sequel, as nostalgia for the period was beginning to wane on the time, as even “Blissful Days” was on 12 months 9 of its eleven-season run.

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Regardless of being barely much less specific than the unique (fewer lyrics like “did she put up a battle?”), the boys listed here are nonetheless attractive mongoloids. There’s even a music quantity about it, that includes Tab Hunter and Connie Stevens, which is well the clumsiest and most embarrassing sequence.

You may’t point out a “lube job” in a film like this with out it being the form of “Didja-get-it?” double entendre the place the solid hams for the digital camera.

Caulfield is so gentle spoken, he appears too shy to hold his personal film, whereas Pfeiffer not less than exudes sufficient pluck and presence to recommend the larger and higher roles in her close to future.

Whereas Pfeiffer deservedly discovered superstardom post-Pink Girls, Caulfield solidified his cult standing with April eighth, “Rex Manning Day,” without end devoted to the title of his character in “Empire Data” (1995). It’s price mentioning that Pfeiffer does lots of her scenes carrying black sun shades, a distancing impact that retains her seeming recreation however not totally current throughout a number of the cheesier numbers.

FAST FACT: “Grease” has earned an astounding $190 million on the U.S. field workplace since its 1978 debut, and that doesn’t embody the huge soundtrack gross sales. “Grease 2” generated simply $15 million 4 years later.

So, why the does the “Pace 2: Cruise Management” of the Eighties have a fanbase? Listed here are some potential causes:

• The ever-present authentic is so incessantly overplayed, it made the sequel appear refreshing and under-appreciated by default.
• Coming 4 years after the unique, there’s a era of youngsters who doubtless grew up with “Grease 2,” whereas the unique felt “outdated” within the midst of MTV mania.
• Maybe former teen icon Tab Hunter singing a couple of intercourse schooling class has extra attraction than former teen icon Frankie Avalon singing about magnificence college?
• Hipsters took to Stephanie and Michael greater than Danny and Sandy, if that’s even potential.

Relating to the latter suggestion – the reversal of a younger girl because the jacket carrying, hassle making insurgent who stirs and transforms the harmless sq. is much less compelling than the opposite method round, although the idea remains to be an issue.

As an alternative of Travolta’s Danny inspiring Newton-John’s Sandy to grow to be a foul lady, Pfeiffer’s Stephanie’s eager for a “cool rider” conjures up Michael to grow to be a mysterious motorbike god (the truth that nobody is aware of its him and he solely wears goggles and a helmet as his disguise, is silly however irrelevant).

Both method, the notion could be very highschool, suggesting that conforming to a clique or persona that isn’t your personal to seek out acceptance and real love. That’s as shallow because it will get.

Granted, each “Grease” films are largely parodies of “Excessive Faculty Confidential” (1958), “Methods to Stuff a Wild Bikini” (1965) and different empty-headed teeny-bopper flicks of that period, however repeating this conform-to-find-acceptance plotline isn’t simply rotten however, sadly, influential, as many highschool comedies and dramas carry the identical message.

I nonetheless discover “Grease 2” to be a cringe-worthy and unlucky observe as much as one of many definitive musical blockbusters of my youth. Even the overdone however gratifying “Staying Alive” (1983), an unlikely sequel to “Saturday Evening Fever,” will get the job achieved higher (and that one nonetheless had Travolta).

However, I’m not attempting to worsen the “Grease 2” followers, whose cult has been steadily rising for many years. Look, if going again to Rydell Excessive, swooning over messages left within the lockers and never even seeing Kenickie and Rizzo is sufficient for you, then who am I to face in the best way of your happiness?

To cite the immortal lyrics of “Cool Rider”:

“To a cool rider, a cool rider,
If he’s cool sufficient, he can burn me by way of and thru,
If it takes without end, then I’ll wait without end,
No abnormal boy, no abnormal boy is gonna do
I desire a cool rider that’s cool.”