Grease

1978

Directed by Randal Kleiser

Netflix says… John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John star in this hit musical comedy that chronicles the romantic entanglements of a group of high school seniors, starting with a summer fling between greaser Danny and good girl Sandy.

• Awesome, we haven’t hit a musical on this list since The Greatest Showman.
• Get ready to sing!
• Okay, you don’t have to sing. But if you don’t, I’m gonna assume you don’t know how to experience true joy in your life.
• Did you know Olivia Newton-John was 30 when she played Sandy?
• Olivia Newton-John was also my first crush as a small child.
• Stockard Channing was 34!
• I mean, I get casting actors in their early 20s to play high school students. You cast minors, you have limited windows of opportunity to shoot scenes because of child labor laws.
• Also, the content of Grease is pretty explicit. I had no idea how adult this movie’s content was when I was a kid.
• I mean, I would sing along to “Greased Lightning” like it was nothing.
• Y’all… that song is dirty.
• Dirty, dirty, dirty.
• But it’s still a fun movie to watch. And sing along with.
• Ha… I like how, at the beginning of the movie, Jan says, “We are adolescent!”
• Who’s she trying to convince?
• It’s Sandy’s first day in a new school and she has no idea where she’s supposed to be. Shouldn’t her parents have been responsible enough to register her prior to the first day of the year?
• Okay… time for “Summer Nights.”
• Movies like Grease and High School Musical give a false impression of what high school is like.
• People don’t just burst into song. And they certainly don’t harmonize with one another.
• It’s really disappointing.
• By the way, it’s not just the main cast that are super old to play high school students.
• At the pep rally scene, you can clearly see a couple of middle aged football players with obvious comb-overs.
• Did they not have young actors in the late 70s?
• Okay… Travolta was only 24. Probably makes him the baby of this bunch.
• What childhood trauma made Rizzo the way she is? Because she is a horrible human being.
• I’m not looking up the facts on this one, but the “girl” who steals Danny away from Sandy at the dance contest has gotta be in her mid 40s.
• I’m a little bummed that most of the snarky things I have to say about Grease involve the age of the actors.
• How about this… Grease has a horrible message for the youth of America.
• It tells us that, no matter what it takes, you should change yourself for the person you think you’re in love with in high school.
• Despite all this, it still lands in my top 100 and I love watching it.
• And singing along with all of the songs.
• Even “Beauty School Dropout.”

All right, that does it for the bottom quarter of my Top 100 Favorite Movies. Come back next week for something a little more family friendly with number 75: Swiss Family Robinson.