Classic Movie review: Grease

Grease was listed as the 20th best musical film of all time by AFI. I must disagree. I didn't like Grease at all, but it did teach me something. I have gone through my life thinking that if a misogynistic jerk wants a nice, clean-cut girl to like him he should change his behaviour, then I watch Grease and I see that it's the other way around! Why didn't anyone tell me?

The only list that Grease should have placed high on is the list of most sexist films ever made. I'm not just talking about sexism directed at women, though there is plenty of that, but there is also a huge amount of sexism directed at men. This movie portrays men as womanizing creeps who only think about one thing. There is not a single male character under the age of 40 in this movie who is not a world-class jerk.

The women, with Sandy being the exception, are all boy-crazy airheads. Then in the end, just when it looks like Danny, John Travolta's character, will change his behavior and become an upstanding citizen, Sandy changes and become as bad as all the other idiots! Who wrote this film? The president of the anti-Youth society. This movie felt like it was a two hour long infomercial on how bad the Youngsters are today.

So that's my rant out of the way, now for the review. The movie was poorly put together, and I had no idea what actually happened in the movie. The plot was all over the place and the main plot point happened before the film actually began! The song and dance numbers felt out of place, the characters were never full developed. In fact, I'm still not sure who all the characters were. The acting was not bad, in fact it was good. John Travolta, Oliva Newton-John, and Stockard Channing stood out, but they were held back by a poor script and bad directing.

I would not recommend Grease to anyone. If you are desperate for a movie musical I would suggest West Side Story, Annie, My Fair Lady, Oliver, High School Musical, Hairspray, or the Sound of Music. Basically anything but Grease.



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