Grease 2 (PG) no stars; **** for camp value (out of ****)
While Paramount was busy preparing the 20th anniversary celebration of the original Grease, last year the studio let the 15th anniversary of its 1982 sequel discreetly pass by. And that's hardly a surprise. Grease 2, a box office catastrophe, is widely considered to be one of the worst sequels ever made; in fact, it just may be one of the worst _films_ ever made. But over the years, this dreadful film has developed a quiet cult following, and even that, too, is hardly a surprise, for Grease 2, in its sheer awfulness, is one of the best camp entertainments you could ever find.
The idea behind Grease 2 isn't so bad--essentially it's a reverse-gender rehash of the original, with Sandy's clean-cut cousin (a very lame link to the first film) Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfield) pining for bad girl Stephanie Zinone (Michelle Pfeiffer, in her first starring role). But just about everything that could go wrong with the film did, starting with the story. Stephanie, of course, has no interest in wholesome, brainy Michael, telling him she wants (in an unintentionally hilarious number, but more on that later) "a cool rider." So Michael secretly takes motorcycle lessons and indeed becomes a slick biker stud that instantly catches Stephanie's eye. The catch is that the shy Michael pretends his studly self is a completely separate person, causing him much distress. What makes all of this even more ridiculous is that all Michael uses to conceal his true identity is where goggles with yellow lenses.
But the preposterousness of Michael's ruse is the least of that character's problems. The biggest is the actor who plays him, Caulfield, who exudes no charisma and, worst of all, cannot carry a single musical note worth a damn. I guess he was cast on his looks, but what good are looks in a film that is dependent on singing? Pfeiffer, as she evidenced years later in The Fabulous Baker Boys, can sing adequately, and she displays a verve and spunk that somewhat foretold her hugely successful acting career. Notice I said "acting career," because if her dancing during her showcase "Cool Rider" number is any indication, she would have crashed and burned pursuing musical theater. But it's her utter lack of mind-body coordination that makes "Cool Rider" one of the high-lowlights of the entire film; is there anything as entertaining as seeing a currently established star completely go for broke and make an ass of herself on the way to the top?
However, Pfeiffer cannot take all of the credit/blame for the mini-masterpiece of camp that is "Cool Rider." At least half of that load goes to the songwriting crew of composer Louis St. Louis and a host of lyricists that would rather not be mentioned here and won't be. St. Louis's melodies aren't terrible, just not very memorable. What is memorable about Grease 2's song score--for all the wrong reasons--are the chowderheaded lyrics. Take this gem from the numb-skulled seduction song "Let's Do It for Our Country": "Let's do it for our country/The red, white, and the blue/Let's do it for our country/Uncle Sam would want us to." Or this one from the execrable sex-education tune "Reproduction": "Reproduction (reproduction)/Put your pollen tube to work/Reproduction (reproduction)/Make my stamen go berserk." Or better yet, my favorite lyric, from "Who's That Guy?", in which Michael debuts his bad boy alter ego: "Who's that guy/On that motorcycle/What would they say if they knew it was Michael?" Believe it or not, St. Louis and company do crank out a couple of passable songs. The ballad "Charades" nicely sums up Michael's inner conflict, but the song is completely mangled by Caulfield's so-called vocal stylings. "(Love Will) Turn Back the Hands of Time" is nowhere near a "You're the One that I Want," but as the big love duet, it's functional. Too bad tone-deaf Caulfield warbles the male part, and the number is staged by director/choreographer Patricia Birch (who choreographed the original Grease) as a beyond-cheesy fantasy sequence, in which Stephanie, believing her "cool rider" to be dead, envisions meeting him in a white, smoke-filled soundstage heaven where he stands atop a pile of motorcycles.
But that's just one in a long line of stellar directorial choices by Birch, who, being a choreographer by trade, has a fetish for huge group dance numbers (six by my count). Birch never directed a film again, and that is just as well, for there is no way she could have possibly topped the choice cut of bad movie nirvana that is Grease 2. I guess there's always hope for a 20th anniversary rerelease in 2002... (Paramount Home Video)
Michael Dequina mrbrown@ucla.edu | michael_jordan@geocities.com | mj23@the18thhole.com mrbrown@michaeljordanfan.com | mj23@michaeljordanfan.com mrbrown@iname.com | mst3k@digicron.com
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"I didn't know what to expect. It's like something you chase for so long, but then you don't know how to react when you get it. I still don't know how to react." --Michael Jordan, on winning his first NBA championship in 1991 ...or, my thoughts after meeting him on November 21, 1997
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