Grease 2

"Grease 2" is the most serendipitous sequel in recent memory. It is an ingratiating, jubilant improvement on a crummy original. Read full review

Where this film has a decided edge on its predecessor is in the staging and cutting of the musical sequences. Choreographer and director Patricia Birch has come up with some unusual settings (a bowling alley, a bomb shelter) for some of the scenes, and employs some sharp montage to give most of the songs and dances a fair amount of punch. Read full review

Light years ahead of Randal Kleiser's 1978 original, this 1982 sequel employs the Shakespearean marriage plot so beloved of classic musicals, in which two mismatched couples are straightened out and the songs express the moral distinctions of love and sex. Read full review

Birch's confidence as a director ebbs and flows throughout -it's odd that she can direct the complicated musical numbers so well and bungle the action scenes so badly. Yet in the end it's hard to resist the movie's bubble-gum romanticism. There's even a dream sequence in which the heroine sings to a vision of her fantasy boyfriend, who appears in heaven in a silver-lame biker's outfit. What can-you say in the face of such sublime silliness but hooray for Hollywood? [14 June 1982, p.88]

Definitely of the so-bad-it's-almost-good genre, this kinda stands the test of time in a camp way, mainly because of the charm of Pfeiffer and Carrington. Read full review

Such niceties as a plausible plot and three-dimensional characters are trampled under Weejun-shod foot, but sheer energy, a handful of good tunes (including a great theme song from the Four Tops), and some very funny one-liners save the day. Read full review

This movie just recycles "Grease," without the stars, without the energy, without the freshness and without the grease. Read full review

Most conspicuously absent is John Travolta, replaced here by Maxwell Caulfield, who can't lift the original greaser's comb. Michelle Pfeiffer (MARRIED TO THE MOB; DANGEROUS LIAISONS) fares better as Olivia Newton-John's replacement, but the whole movie looks as if it has been slapped together to capitalize on its predecessor's success, and no doubt, it was. Read full review

The one surprise, in a product purposely designed not to surprise, is the performance of Connie Stevens as Yvette Mason, the good-looking but aging and overweeningly vain "fun" teacher every high school student has run across ("I love your hair, Miss Mason," cracks one of the coeds, "all 300 pounds of it"). Somehow, Miss Stevens pulls a character out of cotton candy. [11 June 1982]

The sequel to Grease is not much more than a remake, wherein every minute detail is nothing more than an attempt to pilfer the magic of the first film. Read full review

Less a sequel than a retread...Dizzy and slight, with an even more negligible plot than its predecessor had. This time the story can't even masquerade as an excuse for stringing the songs together. Read full review