I was fourteen when Grease came out. It was summer, and I was just discovering boys. What's more, I'd dresssed and made myself up to the nines a while earlier, so that they'd let me in to the 18-certificate Saturday Night Fever. Now, I hadn't liked the movie, but I'd loved John Travolta.
Of course I had to go and see Grease. And when I'd seen it once, I had to go see it again, and again.
It seemed to capture everything that being a teenager was about to me, back then. It had boys, it had sex, it had music and dancing, it had the ever-thorny problem of peer acceptance, and best of all, it had Travolta. That scene, on the first day of school, when he turns around and looks into the camera, his eyes so blue... swoon
Ahem.
The story is a corny tale of the bumpy road to true love for uptight virgin Sandy (Olivia Newton John) and cool, leather clad Danny (John Travolta), with both having to grow up and change who they are to get the one they love. What's more, these are the oldest high-school students in history.
But it works.
Grease is the last great musical. It's silly and exhuberant and it's stuffed full of great songs, written Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, with a new theme for the movie penned by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees. There are some wonderful performances both from the leads and from several of the supporting players -- Didi Conn as kind hearted, somewhat stupid Frenchie, who wants to be a beautician, Eve Arden as the School Principal, Jeff Conolly as Kenickie, Danny's best friend, and most notably -- and the shining star of the entire film -- Stockard Channing as the bad-girl Rizzo, who she manages to make both aggressively hardboiled and touchingly vulnerable (she gets the best song too -- "There are worse things I could do").
It's a joyous romp, and if it fails to catch you up and make you smile you really are a sad case -- with me, every time I see it I'm fourteen again -- and happy.