Grease –
Singalong
****
Dir: Randal Kleiser. With: John Travolta, Olivia
Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway. 110 mins. Cert: PG
Yes, they’ve given Grease the big-screen karaoke treatment,
and yes, they really did press-screen it: professional courtesy prevents me
from revealing which representative of the Murdoch papers gave us a
note-perfect “Beauty School Dropout”. The chief takehome is how closely this
post-Night Fever exercise in
teensploitation – again produced by Bee Gees boss Robert Stigwood – is tied to
its soundtrack: it’s the songs, displaying greater storytelling nous than the
rest of this oddly shambling, plotless perennial, which give the bubblegum its
snap. Today’s T-Birds and Pink Ladies will likely have not one clue who Frankie
Avalon is, but it’s still hard not to respond favourably to its gaudy
terpsichordia, and hard to miss the timeless urges preserved within these
lyrics: even “Summer Nights”, which is hardly thought of as GG Allin, slips in
the flagrantly suggestive “She was good/Ya know what I mean”. Follow the
bouncing balls, fill in your own blanks.
Grease - Singalong plays in selected cinemas tomorrow (Saturday) night.
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