Grease

It's every bit the great songfest it's hailed as, with bucketloads of innuendo thown in behind some of the most energetic musical numbers ever to grace the inside of a movie theatre. Read full review

Grease is a pure pop construct, fueled by movie-star poses, hit songs, and persistent audience fantasies of being an acceptable kind of "bad." Barry Gibb-penned disco theme aside, Grease doesn't really belong to any one era. It's like it's always existed. Read full review

Grease has got it, from the outstanding animated titles of John Wilson all the way through the rousing finale as John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John ride off into teenage happiness. Read full review

GREASE is not really the 1950's teen-age movie musical it thinks it is, but a contemporary fantasy about a 1950's teen-age musical—a larger, funnier, wittier and more imaginative-than-Hollywood movie with a life that is all its own. It uses the Eisenhower era — the characters, costumes, gestures and particularly, the music—to create a time and place that have less to do with any real 50's than with a kind of show business that is both timeless and old-fashioned, both sentimental and wise. The movie is also terrific fun. Read full review

No revival, however joyously promoted, can conceal the fact that this is just an average musical, pleasant and upbeat and plastic. Read full review

Grease works as a musical, a comedy, a light romance, and a gentle satire of teenage life during the '50s. In part because of its persistent high spirits, it's a delight to watch, even 20 years after it first appeared on the screen. Read full review

Sandy, Danny, and their sexier counterparts Rizzo and Kenickie are spectacular fun to watch, especially in their non-TV-edited glory. Though it's virtually impossible to forget, and stay quiet during, the film's many songs, it's also surprising to remember all of the racy dialogue and double entendres in the original. Or maybe it's just that we never got them when we were ten. Read full review

You just can't hate anything this energetic and happy. Read full review

The screen Grease seemed at the time a big, overblown version of the sassy, gritty stage musical. Now the differences seem less important. What the two versions share are sizzle and a refusal to ignore the sexual energy of an exuberant cast. Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago. [27 Mar 1998, p.D6]

there are times when Grease really kicks in. I'm fond of Channing singing "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, rotten with virginity" and then telling an imaginary Troy Donahue, "I know what you wanna do." And most of the big musical numbers work, especially the showstopper: the sunlit Danny-Sandy duet to "Summer Dreams." Greasy kid stuff it all may be, but just like rock 'n' roll, it'll probably never die. [27 Mar 1998, p.A]

Energetic, fun, lively. [19 Jun 1998, p.B2]

Grease isn't a four-star musical. It's fluffy and unimportant, and it gets tedious toward the end with the car-racing sequence that Kleiser staged in the paved-in-concrete Los Angeles River. The friskiness of the performers, the choreography by Patricia Birch and most of all Travolta's phenomenal charm give it its value. Read full review

Sure, it's the same trite teenage fantasy it was 20 years ago when it was first released, but somehow now the energy seems infectiously giddier, the songs zingier, the camp higher. Read full review

Travolta's star presence is confirmed in Grease, a weak musical comedy vehicle . The strength of Travolta's performance isn't from dialogue but shots of Travolta reacting, suddenly becoming macho when he realizes the gang is watching him talk to his girlfriend or smothering a giggle after accidentally elbowing Olivia Newton-John in the breast. These moments alone make Grease worthwhile. [17 Jun 1978, p.P31]

A limp, cheaply made version of the Broadway. Director Randal Kleiser shows no real sense of how a musical is constructed: the songs are bunched together, the production numbers don't move, and the whole project shifts awkwardly between naturalism and stylization. Read full review