Grease 2 (1982) Maxwell Caulfield, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lorna Luft, Maureen Teefy Movie Review

Grease 2 (1982)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Adrian Zmed and Christopher McDonald in Grease 2 (1982)

You Won't Score Tonight with This

It's a new year at Rydell High and whilst there are new seniors and some returning seniors as Frenchy (Didi Conn) is back to complete physics there are some new students including Sandy's English cousin Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfield) who is a bit of a braniac. It doesn't take long for Michael to become smitten with Stephanie Zinone (Michelle Pfeiffer) the leader of the Pink Ladies but as he learns from Frenchy, you need to be a T-Bird to score with a Pink Lady. But for Michael to achieve that he is not only going to have to drop his clean cut image and don a biker leather but he is going to have to rumble with Johnny Nogerelli (Adrian Zmed) the leader of the T-Birds.

I wonder what it must have been like to watch "Grease 2" first, maybe those who did found it a great experience with all these fun characters and big musical numbers. Maybe those who saw it first and loved it were bemused and confused by all this negativity about it and then they discovered why, they watched the original "Grease" and realised how bad this sequel is. And yes I do mean bad as "Grease 2" basically sucks from the first scene to the last.

Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2 (1982)

Now the trouble with "Grease 2" can be summed up as it tries too hard to recapture the feel from the first movie and in doing so ends up feeling like a glee club production. That means we have poor acting, we have over choreographed dance numbers where less would be more and I don't just mean just the jazz hands, plus musical numbers which don't sound like the person is singing them. And I could go on because everything from the comedy to the drama is all pretty poor.

In the end "Grease 2" ends up having almost a split personality as whilst on one hand it is trying to recapture the magic of "Grease" on the other it seems like it is trying for the comedy of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" with the end result being a movie which feels more like a bad spoof. I say bad spoof but some of the performances make this almost an entertaining spoof movie with both Tab Hunter and Connie Stevens delivering fun as two teachers whilst Christopher McDonald's goofy performance would have been more at home in a full on spoof movie but at least is amusing here.

What this all boils down to is that like for many "Grease 2" didn't work for me and is a case that it tries too hard to be as good as the first movie but ending up turning itself in to a spoof by forcing it with songs such as the cringe worthy "Do it for our Country".


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