‘Grease 2’ is in the pink at 40 and has improved with age
- USA TODAY US Edition
- Patrick Ryan
The much-maligned sequel helped launch careers and has found new fans.
If “Grease” is the word, then its scattershot sequel is a run-on sentence.
Featuring gleefully chaotic musical numbers and more abandoned storylines than “Game of Thrones,” “Grease 2” opened in theaters on June 11, 1982, with high hopes of matching the success of its 1978 predecessor starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
Set in 1961, two years after Danny (Travolta) and Sandy (Newton-John) literally flew off in a souped-up car, the sequel is once again set at Rydell High School, where new Pink Ladies leader Stephanie Zinone (Michelle Pfeiffer) meets Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfield), an impossibly handsome British student who also is Sandy’s cousin. But when Stephanie rebuffs his advances, saying she’s holding out for a “cool rider,” Michael transforms into a masked, motorcycling hunk to win her heart.
“Grease 2” flatlined at the box office thanks in part to blistering reviews, with critics calling it a “slight” and “mostly awful” rehash of the original. As a result, Paramount scrapped plans for a third and fourth movie set during the counterculture movement.
But thanks to a lively Twitter conversation sparked by “The Big Sick” director Michael Showalter, and famous fans including Andrew Garfield and June Diane Raphael, the film has been fondly re-evaluated online in recent years, with many people insisting that “Grease 2” is better than the first movie.
“It’s an improvement on the original ‘Grease.’ It has a more fun, female-forward energy,” says writer Gwen Ihnat, who wrote a passionate defense of the sequel in 2017 for The AV Club. “The fact that Sandy changes herself completely is so much less empowering than Stephanie, who isn’t changing for anybody. She has all these guys after her and chooses who she wants to be with.”
As a self-confessed “die-hard fan” of the first movie, comedian/host Anna Roisman won’t go so far as to say “Grease 2” is superior. But she points to the second film’s wall-to-wall bops written by Louis St. Louis and choreographed by director Patricia Birch, and infectious songs such as “Cool Rider,” “Reproduction” and “Girl for All Seasons” that rival anything in the original Broadway adaptation.
“Name another movie that turns the sport of bowling into a full musical production,” Roisman says of the innuendo-filled “Score Tonight.” And with endless scenes of Rydell students auditioning for the school talent show, “(‘Grease 2’) just hits harder as a theater kid, because let’s face it, they’re all theater kids. This movie is for the nerds who needed that talent show.”
Birch has said the script was unfinished when shooting started, which may explain some of the abrupt shifts in tone and plot. Although Travolta and Newton-John don’t return for “Grease 2,” Didi Conn comes back as beauty school dropout Frenchy. Now pursuing skin care, Frenchy reenrolls at Rydell to take chemistry, only to disappear without explanation midway through the movie.
“I just love that Frenchy is still in school,” Roisman says. “She is the glue that holds this franchise together. I also think the luau is the trippiest scene in any movie, and I don’t do drugs. Scenes like that scream ‘cult following’ to me.”
“There are all these dumb little things that crack me up,” Ihnat adds, pointing to Stephanie’s zealous ketchup obsession and how Michael does all his schoolwork in his uncle’s fallout shelter. “It’s funnier (than the original). There’s a low-key charm.”
Like the first “Grease,” the sequel aimed to make big stars out of its young cast of mostly unknowns, which also included Pamela Adlon (FX’s “Better Things”) and Lorna Luft (Judy Garland’s daughter) in minor roles.
Pfeiffer, who was just 23 at the time, went on to shoot her breakthrough role in “Scarface” five months after the movie’s release. Caulfield, meanwhile, struggled to gain traction in Hollywood, and has spoken about the psychological toll it took on him to watch Pfeiffer’s fame grow so quickly in contrast.
Given the inevitable comparisons to Travolta and Newton-John, both actors “had an uphill battle, but I think they did a really great job and have this wonderful chemistry,” Ihnat says. “It’s really about enjoying Michelle’s star power. And Maxwell Caulfield? Totally missed opportunity there, America.”
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