Grease 2 is an Abomination

Grease is about a monumentally consequential transformation of American culture and institutions in the late 1950s. Grease 2 is about punchlines that land like bags of wet cement; songs that imitate the songs of Grease which were already imitating the real thing; and actors that mug relentlessly at the camera because That’s Really Funny.

Grease was written by two actual Chicago greasers who lived it. Grease 2 was written by a Canadian comedian, recommended by Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live.

Grease had been a financial goldmine for Paramount and a cultural juggernaut. Allan Carr and the studio thought it only made sense to put a sequel into production right away, but director Randal Kleiser wasn’t interested. So Carr hired Grease choreographer Pat Birch to choreograph and direct, but to her dismay, neither Jim Jacobs or Warren Casey signed on to write the songs, and Bronte Woodard, who wrote the first screenplay, was dead. Cinematographer Bill Butler did not return, so Frank Stanley took his place, a cinematographer whose experience was four Clint Eastwood movies and a Blake Edwards comedy.

The Studio called Travolta and Newton-John in for a meeting, but they never talked again. Both Stockard Channing and Jeff Conaway were asked to return for cameos as well, but they both declined. Several actors from the first film did return to reprise their roles, Didi Conn as Frenchy, Eve Arden as Principal McGee, Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun, Dody Goodman as Blanche, Eddie Deezen as Eugene, and Dennis C. Stewart as Craterface (though oddly, renamed). At one point, new characters were set to be played by Andy Gibb, Martin Mull, Jane Curtin, and Robert Klein. The eventual cast would include Michelle Pfeiffer, Maxwell Caulfield, Christopher McDonald, Adrian Zmed, and Lorna Luft, among others.

To Birch’s further dismay, they hired Ken Finkleman, a Canadian comedian, who was in the midst of writing and directing the gag-stuffed Airplane II, to write the screenplay for Grease 2. What could go  wrong? When asked in a Q&A, if the producers had definitely wanted the story to be a gender reverse of Grease, Birch answered, “They wanted a sequel.” Cha-ching!

The plot emerged as a uncomfortable mix of teenage exploitation movies, MGM backstage musicals, and 1980s teen sex comedies, and the title went through several iterations – Summer School, Greasier, Son of Grease. Caulfield thought Grease 2 was a terrible title and he had lobbied for Son of Grease. In hindsight, that might have been a little too on the nose. Years later, in an even greater irony, High School Musical 2 was an obvious, lesser, rip-off of Grease 2, which was an obvious, lesser, rip-off of Grease on film… which some might argue was a lesser version of Grease on stage.

In the end Grease 2 was a mess, almost as if someone had wanted to make another film of Grease, but they couldn’t get the rights, so instead they made a less talented, carbon-copy imitation of Grease, song by song, and then set the calendar ahead two years to 1961 and swapped the genders of the two leads, to disguise the theft. But they also stole elements from other teen comedies, like the two horny teachers, borrowed from Porky’s. None of it worked.

But it also wasn’t really a musical; it was a teen comedy interrupted by songs. YouTube film critic Isabella Santini puts it plainly:

A musical isn’t just a collection of songs. It’s a collection of songs which interact with each other, and with non-musical elements, to tell a story. And Grease 2 does not use its songs to tell a story.

The sequel opened in early 1982, and made only about $15 million at the box office, with a production budget of $11 million. It was beaten at the box office its first weekend by ET, Star Trek II, Rocky III and Poltergeist. Jim Jacobs made it known he did not like the sequel. Critic Roger Ebert called it “Grease without the stars, without the energy, without the freshness and without the grease.” In 2022, Barry Wurst wrote for the website Hollywood in Toto:

Grease 2 is like an underwhelming high school junior class that takes pole position after a group of widely liked seniors graduate and depart with legacy status forever intact. I didn’t think it was possible but this is all somehow cornier than the original. A more-of-the-same touch it doesn’t quite get away with: the teenagers are all played by adults who appear in their mid-30s.

Grease 2 was at one point meant to be the second film in a four-film Grease series, continuing the story on into the 1960s. The terrible critical and commercial thud of Grease 2 ended talk of further sequels. But over the years, the film has found a cult following, and today the internet is peppered with essays about why Grease 2 is superior to Grease.

The score of Grease 2 was written by a bunch of songwriters, mostly in shameless imitation of Grease, each song in the sequel imitating a song (or songs) from the original, more or less directly – though not musically, since very little of the Grease 2 score fits the period. A reasonable match-up of the songs from Grease and Grease 2 might look like this:

“Grease” = “Back to School”
“Summer Nights” = “Score Tonight,” “Reproduction," “Who’s That Guy?”
“Beauty School Dropout” = “Brad,” “Girl for All Seasons”
“Greased Lightning” = “Cool Rider,” “Prowlin’”
“Look at Me,. I’m Sandra Dee” = “Do It For Our Country”
“Hopelessly Devoted” = “Charades”
“It’s Raining on Prom Night” = “Girl for All Seasons”
“Sandy” = “Charades,” “Hands of Time”
“Worse Things I Could Do” = “Hands of Time”
“Sandra Dee” reprise = “Charades”
“You’re the One That I Want” = “Rock a Hula Luau”
“We Go Together” = “Back to School,” “Rock a Hula Luau,” “We’ll Be Together”

There’s even a motorcycle (sort of) “rumble” in imitation of the drag race in Grease, complete with the same rival from the first movie. Weirdly, Craterface and the Bad Guys ride their bikes about as well as Imperial Stormtroopers shoot.

Beyond the pale imitations, none of the songs really do much work in moving the plot or characters forward, because they’re all filled with clichés, generic jokes, and endless repetition. Repetition like that works on the radio, but not in musicals.

Maybe the film would have been greeted more warmly if it hadn’t been pretending to be a sequel to Grease, even though that was really the only reason to make it. The two films have nothing to do with each other beyond the most superficial. And the hapless comedian-screenwriter and the stable of pop songwriters weren’t even trying to maintain any of the themes or authenticity of Grease, even in its tamed-down 1978 film version.

The lyric of “Back to School” that opens Grease 2 is as generic and empty as the lyric for the BeeGees’ “Grease,” but at least “Grease” is still a great pop song, and “Back to School” is bland imitation. And just as the first film’s title track had nothing to do with 1959, “Back to School” certainly has nothing to do with 1961, when Grease 2 is set. And really, this is a finale weirdly positioned as an opening number, just one glaring misstep among many. Then again, the plot of Grease 2 also plays out backwards, with the climactic transformation (of Michael) at the beginning instead of the end.

But why is no one onscreen singing for the first half of “Back to School,” even though they are dancing to it? And who is singing? And then why are they all singing along for the second half of the song? That’s just not how musicals work.

And they do the same thing again in “Who’s That Guy?” and “Charades.” This screenplay is just another teen comedy that has little affection or understanding of movie musicals, or of Grease. As one example, this conversation right after the opening song:

Michael: How well do you know that Stephanie Zinone?
Frenchy: Stephanie Zinone is one of my very best... Uh-oh. Michael, there’s something you don’t understand. Stephanie Zinone is a Pink Lady. If you’re not a T-Bird, which you are not, you can look, but don’t touch. I wouldn’t even look.
Michael: Well, how do you become a T-Bird, then, eh?

But the T-Birds aren’t a real gang! In the stage show, they don’t have leather jackets or a gang name. Weirdly, in the movie, they can all afford matching leather jackets with a gang name on back. But they’re still not a real gang; they’re a bunch of dorks and misfits who want to be cool. They’re certainly not dangerous, and Frenchy would know that better than anyone.

This conversation between Frenchy and Michael sets up the central conflict of the Grease 2 plot, yet it’s based on a violation of the established rules of Grease that the whole world knew by then. It gives us a completely different conception of who the Pink Ladies are – now a weird Ladies’ Auxiliary, no longer the quirky misfits, no longer the strong-minded Pink Ladies of Grease, who can do just fine without a man – or with quite a few.

Later in the movie, in the scene after the number “Who’s That Guy?” one of the interchangeable Pink Ladies says to Stephanie, “You know, Steph. There’s been talk. We haven’t been talkin’, but there has been talk questioning your loyalty to the Birds. . . the code does say we’re T-Bird chicks, at least till grad.” What? The Pink Ladies have a “code”? Since when? And they “belong” to the guys?

No.

Rizzo would smack her.

This is not a sequel to Grease.

The second big production number in a row, “Score Tonight,” is so openly derivative it even uses a barely disguised version of the bass line from “Summer Nights.” But it’s not even a decent imitation. “Summer Nights” is about the backstory for the central couple, plus the characterizations of all the individuals and both groups; and also the conflicting worldviews that will propel the plot – between the men and women (in their responses and questions), and also between social classes (in the different memories and expectations of the two lovers). On the other hand, “Score Tonight” is a one-sentence, one-joke song. These kids (and nuns?!?) like bowling, and also score can be a double-entendre. That’s the whole song. Now ask yourself, have you seen any 1950s gang movies (and there a lot!) in which they go bowling? Are the T-Bird scary or are they goofballs who bowl? But what about “Mooning” in Grease? I hear the Grease 2 fans respond; that’s a one-joke song too!

Except it’s not. “Mooning” starts with the double-entendre but then explores it – because the difference in this case is generational. These kids use the word mooning to mean baring one’s ass. Their parents use the same word to mean being in love, or dreaming of love. Grease is about the emerging independent teenage culture, and that’s what this song is about.

Grease 2 is not about bowling.

Michael’s big decision to become the Cool Rider comes from the bizarre detail that these high school boys are bikers. Marlon Brando in The Wild One wasn’t a high school kid. Michael talks to another misfit Dolores (Grease 2’s less interesting version of Anybodys from West Side Story) outside the bowling alley about the Pink Ladies.

Dolores: They think they’re cool ‘cause they got wheels.
Michael: Looks like we don’t make the grade.
Dolores: With them it’s all these weird codes and rules and pledges about cycles. You gotta be a biker or a biker’s old lady. Without a cycle, forget it. Pisses me off.
Michael: We’re in the same boat. I sure can’t afford a cycle without a job.

But how did the T-Birds all get motorcycles without jobs? And while we’re on the subject, how did Rhonda get Rizzo’s car? It’s only two years later – doesn’t Rizzo need a car anymore? But also, when all the guys around Stephanie ride motorcycles, why is that so central to her romantic fantasy (and yet another repetitious, one-idea lyric), “Cool Rider”? She sees guys on motorcycles literally every day. It’s like a character in The Fast and the Furious fantasizing about a guy who drives a car.

And these lyrics just aren’t the lyrics of a musical. They are empty, repetitious, cliché-infested, and padded with meaningless filler. As just one example, in “Cool Rider”:

I want a rider that’s cool
That’s the way it’s gonna be
That’s the way that l feel

These three lines say literally nothing more than the song title. This could have been a great Strong Woman song. She could explain what “cool” means to her, what’s exciting about a motorcycle, what it feels like between her legs (isn’t that the point of singing while straddling the ladder?), what’s exciting about a biker. Nashville pop songwriter Dennis Linde wrote this song, and you can tell he’s never met a biker or a biker chick.

Or seen a musical.

Grease is all about authenticity, and authenticity is complicated. But half (more?) of the songs in Grease 2 boil down to a single idea: “I/We want sex.” We already know that in the first few minutes of the movie. But they never go any deeper than that.

While the songs in Grease are all about sex, they explore the sexuality of 1959 – in terms of point of view (“Summer Nights”), puberty (“Those Magic Changes”), relationships (“Freddy My Love”), rejection (“Raining on Prom Night,”), privacy, both in cars (“Greased Lightning”) and at drive-ins (“Alone at a Drive-In Movie,”), slut-shaming (“Rock and Roll Party Queen”), choices (“Worse Things,”), and indoctrination into the morality of the mainstream culture (“Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” and “Sandra Dee” reprise).

The first Grease is about how American sexuality was changed by rock and roll, cars, and drive-ins. But Grease 2 is about nothing more than Teenagers Like Sex. Yeah, we know.

Every element of the Grease 2 plot is either pointless or bizarre. It’s hard enough to believe Rizzo, Jan, and Marty ever auditioning for a school talent show (though Frenchy might), but can you imagine Danny and Kenickie doing it? How has the Rydell universe turned so upside-down in two years? The real answer is that this movie is not actually a sequel to Grease. It’s just a teen comedy, dressed up as a backstage musical, cashing in on the Grease fan base.

And if you think “Summer Nights” is vaguely rapey, there’s nothing vague about “Do It For Your Country” in Grease 2. It’s not very clever, to begin with, but it’s really hard to laugh at today. Some Grease 2 apologists will claim this song is actually a smart satire of fascism. If it weren’t in the middle of Grease 2, that might be a defendable position. But Grease 2 is neither satire nor smart. And then there’s this line:

I get to second base with Sharon and get called out when I try third. He bombed out in the bomb shelter. Yeah. I think we could all use a little guaranteed all-the-way action.

So what’s “guaranteed all-the-way action”? It sure doesn’t sound consensual.

Perhaps most puzzling is the song “Prowlin’.” It partly lives in a motorcycle gang movie, filmed at the gas station and on their bikes. But somehow it also lives in a backstage musical, as a diegetic number in the school talent show. So if the T-Birds know they’re singing onstage, are they also singing out loud at the gas station and while riding? And why are they singing about prowling for chicks, but never actually doing any prowling? We already know these guys are too goofy to actually “prowl,” aren’t they? And aren’t they all dating the Pink Ladies?

“Reproduction” is so dumb and so utterly unconnected to the story, it’s baffling. There are four songs (and twelve hundred jokes) in the film about sex. Do we need another one? And yet another imitation of “Summer Nights”? And if they have to do it, why not involve the lead characters, only a few of whom appear in the song and only briefly?

In any decent backstage musical (Cabaret, for example), the “onstage” songs comment on the “offstage” action. But “Girl for All Seasons” couldn’t be more dramatically worthless. And who paid for that huge glittery set and all those costumes? Movie musicals don’t have to be Reality; but they have to make some kind of sense; they need an internal logic of some kind. Even musicals like Little Shop of Horrors, Bat Boy, Urinetown, and Head Over Heels all have internal narrative logic.

Grease 2 has none.

The song “Hands of Time” illustrates just how clueless the writers and songwriters were about musical construction. For most of this song, we are in a fantasy, inside Stephanie’s mind. We’re supposed to believe that in the “real world” the girls are continuing “Girl for All Seasons” onstage for the talent show, as Stephanie goes into her head thinking about her Cool Rider. But bizarrely, at the end of the song, we return to the talent show, and instead of the end of “Girl for all Seasons,” now it’s “Hands of Time” being sung onstage, solo, as a diegetic song onstage. And then the audience gives Stephanie a standing ovation for her song.

Could they hear the whole thing? Was she singing out loud the whole time? If so, how did the band know what to play? We know it was only in her head at the beginning because her lips weren’t moving. When did it switch? The film doesn’t tell us. Grease 2 ends with a clumsy callback to Grease 1. While the lyric to “We Go Together” is no great work of poetry, the lyric to the finale of Grease 2, “We’ll Be Together” is a bland, generic, 80s pop-ballady anthem, with the most meaningless lyric yet:

We’ll be together,
Always together.
Like birds of a feather,
Forever and ever,
We’ll be together.

The original “We Go Together” is about belonging, now, here in the present, and it’s about belonging on their terms, using their language. On the other hand, “We’ll Be Together” is about never moving on, about nothing ever changing in the future, using an overly timeworn cliché to say it. That’s just depressing, as well as bad craft. And also, who ends a rock musical with a down-tempo ballad? The various writers didn’t even do a very good job of imitating.

Admittedly, there are lots of passionate Grease 2 fans out there. If you first encountered this movie at age fourteen, if you grew up with it, particularly if you saw it before you saw Grease, you’re apt to love it. If you grew up with Grease, you’re apt to hate Grease 2. If you first knew the stage show, you’re apt to think Grease 2 is an abomination.

Maybe its greatest sin is, despite its many missteps as a sequel to Grease, it’s also a pretty average movie, with average cinematography, average sound design, and average production design. So little about the screenplay makes sense, and it almost seems like most of the people working on it weren’t even trying.

In 2014, the film was adapted for the stage as a concert-musical in the UK under the title Cool Rider, and a similar version was done in Australia called Grease 2.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about this one.

Long Live the (Good) Musical!
Scott

This post is an excerpt from my book Go Greased Lightning: The Amazing Authenticity of Grease.