"Grease" 4K Review

 Olivia Newton-John passed away today at age 73, most likely from cancer which had dogged her for years. This meant one of two options for tonight's movie and despite it also being the 42nd anniversary of the release of Xanadu, we decided to go with her first movie, 1978's Grease, mostly because it's been forever since I've seen it, I've seen Xanadu many more times including within the past few years, and I've had an unwatched 4K digital copy in my iTunes account for a couple of years now.

For those unaware of what a Grease is, it's the 1978 adaptation of the 1971 musical about life in 1958 at Rydell High, presumably a school for people with severe learning disabilities judging by the fact the average age for students looks to be around 30 years old. The previous summer at the beach 29-year-old Australian Sandy (ONJ) met and fell and love with 23-year-old Danny (John Travolta), a transfer student from 1977 Brooklyn where he was a disco king, but unknown to her now leads a greaser clique called the T-Birds at school. 

At summer's end, Sandy was to be deported back to the land Down Under and feared she'd never see Danny again, but lucky for her cradle-robbing self (and for the movie to happen) she ends up at Rydell where she's immediately befriended by The Lizzies Pink Ladies (no Jeffs gang?) lead by husky-voiced 33-year-old Rizzo (Stockard Channing) who is getting hot and bothered with 27-year-old T-Bird Kenickie (Jeff Conaway, who had played Danny on Broadway, but hadn't starred in Saturday Night Fever), a dim bulb who would probably end up a cab driver and inspire a really good all-female Scottish band nearly 40 years later.

When the lovers are reunited, Danny blows her off, acting like he's too cool for a future star of Xanadu. Oh, he still loves her, but needs to front for his gang of Three Stooges rejects. She tries to date a dumb jock (a bleached-blonde Lorenzo Lamas, star of Body Rock!) which inspires Danny to try and play various sportball games because he's not willing to let his greaseball Droogs know he's sweet on her but is willing to go all jock to impress her? Whut?

I'm goofing on the movie because there's nothing I'll say that will make you like/love/hate it any more/less than you do already. I remember seeing it when it came out and I'd probably seen it once or twice in the ensuing 44 years, but there was a lot I didn't recall like how leisurely-paced it was, how long the dance contest show scene ran, the car race at Thunder Road which looks less like New Jersey and a lot like the L.A. River. Pre-MTV musicals were a different beast and it's interesting to see what little details were layered into the edges of scenes.

But ignoring that you need a crane to suspend your disbelief at the cast nearly qualifying for AARP playing high schoolers, the greater problem engaging with Grease in the 21st Century is that we're too removed from an nostalgia artifact made for a specific audience at a specific time referencing an era that wasn't too far in the past then.

The 1970s were when Boomers started to get misty about their teen lives in the late-Fifties/early-Sixties. American Graffiti came out in 1973 to tell a story about 1962; Happy Days debuted just four months later (but was actually based on a pilot which predated George Lucas' film and was why he cast Ron Howard, not the other way around) and was set in the 1950s. Perhaps it was the post-Vietnam desire for simpler times before war and Boomer hippies ruined everything.

To put it in perspective, watching Grease in 2022 is like people in 2066 watching a 2022 movie based on a 2015 musical (like Hamilton) set in 2002 (not like Hamilton). Would it make any cultural sense in a manner that would resonate with audiences waaaaay down the line? Watching Grease reminds me of watching Happy Days back in my pre-teen days; the soundtrack album was in heavy rotation along with various KISS, ELO records and first The Cars album. 

But the thin writing - we really don't get any real depth to the characters, though the cast fleshes them out - and static presentation doesn't really age well. Director Randall Kleiser hadn't made a feature before, but was recommended by Travolta after being directed in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble by him.

The 4K Dolby Vision transfer is super clean, bright and colorful, sourced from the original negative, but also suffers from source softness due to having to run soft focus to mask the ages of the elderly cast and use a 2nd generation print when the neg was damaged. Audio is also source-limited in its dynamics, no Atmos remix here (the physical disc does get one, though), but also clear. 

I didn't check out the extras, but if I do this will be updated.

If you're a fan of Grease, then you'll enjoy this 4K version; if you're so-so on it or have never seen it, it's currently streaming on Paramount+.

Score: 6/10. Buy it if you're a fan; catch on cable otherwise.