"'What happened to the Danny Zuko I knew at the beach?' With this stunned and plaintive cry, Olivia Newton-John introduces the main theme and narrative dynamic of this still very enjoyable 1978 movie based on the original stage musical.
"Newton John plays Sandy, and she'd met such a sweet boy over the summer, enjoying a more-or-less platonic beachside romance and imagining she would never see him again once she went back to Australia. But her family's plans changed and, with the new term, Sandy shows up at the local high school and is astonished to see Danny, played by John Travolta. Compelled to be super-cool in front of his gang buddies, he is crudely dismissive of Sandy, but secretly still in love with her.
"We hear the classic split-point-of-view song Summer Nights, in which Sandy regales her saucer-eyed friends with Danny's gallantry and Danny jeeringly implies he'd had his way with her on the sand.
"Grease broke John Travolta through to family audiences who might have been wary about his more adult movie sensation, Saturday Night Fever, the year before. It was part of the 70s fashion for 50s nostalgia that also had its expression in George Lucas's American Graffiti and Garry Marshall's longrunning TV show Happy Days. It's still a sugar-rush of a film." - Guardian
Randal Kleiser
Country(ies):
John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing