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GREASE 2
My recent re-watch of Married to the Mob prompted a second look at another early entry on Michelle Pfeiffer's resume. Reputedly one of the worst sequels ever made, the years have not been kind to this film and its legacy as the armpit of movie sequels lives on.
This 1982 sequel to the 1978 classic takes the same basic premise as the original film but attempts a gender switch: This time, Sandy's cousin Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfied) has arrived at Rydell High as an exchange student and is immediately attracted to the head Pink Lady Stephanie (Pfeiffer) who is considered off-limits to Michael because he's not a T-Bird and the current leader of the T-Birds, Johnny (Adrian Zmed) still carries a torch for Stephanie.
The movie opens with a terrific number called "Back to School Again" but everything goes downhill after that as screenwriter Ken Finkelman, who later directed another bad sequel, Airplane II: The Sequel has constructed a limp story built purely around the legacy of the first film, which was a bad idea, evidenced that so few of the stars of the first film wanted nothing to do with this one and most of the actors from the first film who did sign on for this mess are ones we really didn't care about in the first film.
I guess we were supposed to have unconditional acceptance of the Michael Carrington character because we are told that he is the cousin of Olivia Newton-John's Sandy Olsson and that his guide to the world of Rydell is first film refugee Frenchy, a virtual cameo by the always annoying Didi Conn, but it just didn't work for me.
Maxwell Caulfield is pretty but his performance is wooden and has absolutely no chemistry with Pfeiffer, whose career somehow survived this debacle. Zmed is no John Travolta, working very hard to keep his shirt buttoned and keeping the audience from wanting to punch him in the face. Lorna Luft does have some funny moments channeling Marilyn Monroe, but Eve Arden, Dody Goodman, Sid Ceasar, Tab Hunter, and Connie Stevens are wasted in roles that just slow down an already deadening musical.
The horrible musical score by Louis St. Louis, Frank Musker, Howard Greenfield, Rob Helger, and Dominic Bugatti includes "classics" like "Let's Score Tonight", "Do it for Our Country", "Reproduction", "Cool Rider", and "Charades".
Patricia Birch's direction and choreography are lazy and uninspired...there are scenes lifted directly from the 1978 film that don't even attempt to disguise the fact. And Birch mounted the original 1971 Broadway show! Can't even think of something positive regarding the production values...for a musical, the sound and sound editing are lazy as well...several songs sound like they are being performed in a tunnel. Proof positive as to why sequels are killing Hollywood.
My recent re-watch of Married to the Mob prompted a second look at another early entry on Michelle Pfeiffer's resume. Reputedly one of the worst sequels ever made, the years have not been kind to this film and its legacy as the armpit of movie sequels lives on.
This 1982 sequel to the 1978 classic takes the same basic premise as the original film but attempts a gender switch: This time, Sandy's cousin Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfied) has arrived at Rydell High as an exchange student and is immediately attracted to the head Pink Lady Stephanie (Pfeiffer) who is considered off-limits to Michael because he's not a T-Bird and the current leader of the T-Birds, Johnny (Adrian Zmed) still carries a torch for Stephanie.
The movie opens with a terrific number called "Back to School Again" but everything goes downhill after that as screenwriter Ken Finkelman, who later directed another bad sequel, Airplane II: The Sequel has constructed a limp story built purely around the legacy of the first film, which was a bad idea, evidenced that so few of the stars of the first film wanted nothing to do with this one and most of the actors from the first film who did sign on for this mess are ones we really didn't care about in the first film.
I guess we were supposed to have unconditional acceptance of the Michael Carrington character because we are told that he is the cousin of Olivia Newton-John's Sandy Olsson and that his guide to the world of Rydell is first film refugee Frenchy, a virtual cameo by the always annoying Didi Conn, but it just didn't work for me.
Maxwell Caulfield is pretty but his performance is wooden and has absolutely no chemistry with Pfeiffer, whose career somehow survived this debacle. Zmed is no John Travolta, working very hard to keep his shirt buttoned and keeping the audience from wanting to punch him in the face. Lorna Luft does have some funny moments channeling Marilyn Monroe, but Eve Arden, Dody Goodman, Sid Ceasar, Tab Hunter, and Connie Stevens are wasted in roles that just slow down an already deadening musical.
The horrible musical score by Louis St. Louis, Frank Musker, Howard Greenfield, Rob Helger, and Dominic Bugatti includes "classics" like "Let's Score Tonight", "Do it for Our Country", "Reproduction", "Cool Rider", and "Charades".
Patricia Birch's direction and choreography are lazy and uninspired...there are scenes lifted directly from the 1978 film that don't even attempt to disguise the fact. And Birch mounted the original 1971 Broadway show! Can't even think of something positive regarding the production values...for a musical, the sound and sound editing are lazy as well...several songs sound like they are being performed in a tunnel. Proof positive as to why sequels are killing Hollywood.