Last week, I watched Grease 2 for the first time in 30 years. And viewing it with adult eyes, two things jumped out at me:
- It’s like it was made by someone who hated the original Grease.
- Based on the contemporaneous reviews I’ve read, it was made for those people, too. Who knew so many folks hated Grease back in the day?
It has —and I’m being generous— two tolerable songs, and the performances are so bad and/or weird that Adrian Fucking Zmed manages to steal the show. Maxwell Caulfield may be the least talented singer to ever front a musical, and like Adam Driver in Star Wars, Michelle Pfeiffer acts as if she’s in a different movie altogether… she’s too subtle where she should go big, too loud when she should be quiet, and seems like she’s doing her best not to shout “fuck this” and walk off at any minute.
But dear God help me, it still instantly transported me back to thirteen years old. Which is quite a long trip at this point.