45 years later, ‘Grease’ movie rocks again

Above: "Grease" will celebrate its 45th anniversary with a series of local screenings. (Photo/Fathom Events)
“Grease” is the kind of movie that wouldn’t seem to be popular today. Yes, it has that infectious musical score. But the themes …
Still, “Grease” endures. A 45th anniversary showing of the film, directed by Randal Kleiser and starring John Travolta and the late Olivia Newton-John, will screen at two area Regal Cinemas theaters: at Northtown Mall and Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone Stadium.
The movie will screen at 4 and 7 p.m. on Sunday and at 7 only on Wednesday, at both theaters.
“Grease” the movie is based on the original Chicago musical stage play by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, which was later adapted – and tamed down from its original raunchy version – for Broadway. Beginning in 1972, it ran there for 3,388 performances, a record at the time.
The movie, which opened in 1978, is set 20 years earlier. It involves teenagers Danny (played by Travolta) and the Australian girl Sandy (Newton-John) around whose off-again/on-again high school romance the whole film revolves. Its several re-releases over the years have attracted a range of critical reactions.
Writing for the Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Arthur Knight had a positive take. “What makes it work is its youthful vitality, the tremendous energy and imagination expended on its virtually wall-to-wall song and dance number,” he wrote.
Vincent Canby, writing for the New York Times when the film was originally released, praised the film, despite its being "not really the 1950's teen-age movie musical it thinks it is, but a contemporary fantasy about a 1950's teen-age musical—a larger, funnier, wittier and more imaginative-than-Hollywood movie with a life that is all its own."
In her 1978 review, Judith Martin of the Washington Post had a different view. “Couldn't the makers of ‘Grease’ have unearthed one person who was alive in that time,” she wrote, “perhaps even one who attended an American high school then, and checked their information?”
Good question. You decide. I’ll leave you with this: “You’re the One That I Want.”