Grease 2


Grease 2 is a 1982 American musical romantic comedy film and the sequel to the 1978 film Grease, which is based upon the 1971 musical of the same name by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Originally titled "More Grease",
the film was produced by Allan Carr and Robert Stigwood, and directed and choreographed by Patricia Birch, who also choreographed the first film and the Broadway musical. It takes place two years after the original film at Rydell High School, set in the 1961–1962 school year, with an almost entirely new cast, led by actors Maxwell Caulfield and Michelle Pfeiffer in her first starring role.
The film was released theatrically on June 11, 1982 and grossed over $15 million against a production budget of $11 million. The film, now best known for being the breakout roles for Pfeiffer and Christopher McDonald, was otherwise poorly received, with Grease co-creator Jim Jacobs particularly displeased with it.

Plot

It is 1961, two years after the original Grease ended. The first day of school has arrived as Principal McGee and her secretary Blanche react in horror as the students, among them the new T-Birds and Pink Ladies, arrive at high school. The Pink Ladies are now led by Stephanie Zinone, who feels she has "outgrown" her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Johnny Nogerelli, the arrogant and rather immature new leader of the T-Birds.
A new arrival comes in the form of clean-cut English student Michael Carrington. He is welcomed and introduced to the school atmosphere by Frenchy, who was asked by Sandy to help show Michael around. Frenchy reveals she has returned to Rydell to get her high school diploma so she can start her own cosmetics company. Michael eventually meets Stephanie and quickly becomes smitten with her.
At the local bowling alley, a game turns sour due to the animosity between Johnny and Stephanie. Stephanie retaliates by kissing the next man who walks in the door, who happens to be Michael. Bemused by this unexpected kiss, Michael falls in love with Stephanie so asks her out, but he learns that she has a very specific vision of her ideal man. After realising that he will only win her affections if he turns himself into a cool rider, Michael accepts payments from the T-Birds to write term papers for them; he uses the cash to buy a motorcycle.
Following an unusual biology lesson given by Mr. Stuart, a substitute teacher, a gang of rival motorcyclists called the Cycle Lords led by Leo Balmudo, surprise the T-Birds at the bowling alley. Before the fight starts, a lone mysterious biker appears defeats the enemy gang and disappears into the night. Stephanie is fascinated with the stranger. Meanwhile, Louis, one of the T-Birds, attempts to trick his sweetheart Sharon, one of the Pink Ladies and Stephanie's friends into losing her virginity to him by taking her to a fallout shelter and faking a nuclear attack
The next evening while working at a gas station/garage, Stephanie is surprised again by the Cool Rider, and they enjoy a romantic twilight motorcycle ride, which includes a kiss. Just as Michael is about to reveal his identity, they are interrupted by the arrival of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies. Before Michael leaves, he tells Stephanie that he will see her at the school talent show, in which the Pink Ladies and T-Birds are performing. Johnny, enraged by Stephanie's new romance, threatens to fight the Cool Rider if he sees him with her again. The Pink Ladies walk away haughtily, but this has little effect on the T-Birds' self-confidence.
At school, Stephanie's poor grades in English lead her to accept Michael's offer of help. Johnny, upon seeing them together in a discussion, demands that Stephanie quit the Pink Ladies to preserve his honor. Although still enchanted by the mysterious Cool Rider, interactions with Michael reveal that she has become romantically interested in him as well. Michael ponders over the continuing charade he puts on for Stephanie.
At the talent show, Stephanie and the Cool Rider meet up but are abruptly ambushed by the T-Birds who pursue Michael on their respective motorcycles, with Stephanie, Sharon, Paulette, and Rhonda following in a car. They chase him to a construction site which conceals a deadly drop, and the biker's absence suggests that he has perished below, leaving Stephanie heartbroken and inconsolable. Johnny and his T-Birds remove the competing Preptones – preppie boys – by tying them to a shower pole in the boys' locker room and drenching them. During the Pink Ladies' performance in the talent show, Stephanie enters a dreamlike fantasy world where she is reunited with her mystery biker. She is named winner of the contest and crowned the queen of the upcoming graduation luau, with Johnny hailed as king for his performance of "Prowlin'" with his fellow T-Birds.
The school year ends with the luau, during which the Cycle Lords appear and begin to destroy the celebration. However, the Cool Rider reappears. After he defeats the Cycle Lords again, he reveals himself to be Michael. Initially shocked, Johnny gives him a T-Birds jacket, officially welcoming him into the gang, and Stephanie is delighted that she can now be with him. Michael and Stephanie share a very passionate kiss and he whispers that he loves her. All the couples pair off happily at the seniors' graduation as the graduating class sings. The credits start rolling in yearbook-style, as in the original film.

Cast

Caulfield had already made his Broadway debut with roles in The Elephant Man and Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Having seen his performances, Allan Carr offered Caulfield the role of Michael over thousands of applicants. Unlike co-star Pfeiffer, Caulfield's career following Grease 2 was damaged by the film's failure. He has been quoted as saying: "Before Grease 2 came out, I was being hailed as the next Richard Gere or John Travolta. However, when Grease 2 flopped, nobody would touch me. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in my face. It took me 10 years to get over Grease 2."
With only a few television roles and small film appearances, the 23-year-old Pfeiffer was an unknown actress when she attended the casting call audition for the role of Stephanie. Other better-known actresses up for the part included Lisa Hartman, Kristy McNichol, Andrea McArdle, and singer Pat Benatar. Pfeiffer was a wild card choice, but according to Birch, she won the part because she "has a quirky quality you don't expect."
;The T-Birds
;The Pink Ladies

Development

Grease co-producer Allan Carr had a deal with Paramount Pictures to be paid $5 million to produce a sequel, with production beginning within three years of the original film. Carr decided to hire Patricia Birch as director for the sequel, as she had previously served as the choreographer for the stage and film versions of Grease. Birch was initially hesitant to accept after learning that neither composers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey nor John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John would be involved in film. Bronte Woodard, the writer who adapted the original stage material for the original film, had died in 1980, and Canadian comic Ken Finkleman was tasked with penning a new script mostly from scratch. The total budget for the production was $11.2 million, almost double the budget of the original.
Grease 2 was intended to be the second film in a proposed Grease franchise of four films and a television series. However, the projects were scrapped due to the underwhelming box office performance of Grease 2. Maxwell Caulfield was unhappy with the film's "drab" title, and unsuccessfully lobbied to change it to Son of Grease.

Casting

Birch proposed an idea to feature Travolta and Newton-John reprising their characters as a now married couple running a gas station near the end of the film, which did not come to fruition. Paramount tried to get Jeff Conaway and Stockard Channing from the first film to do cameos but this did not happen.
Timothy Hutton was announced as a male star, but Maxwell Caulfield was signed after impressing producers on Broadway in Entertaining Mister Sloane.
Pfeiffer had only made a few films before:
That was really weird for me. I'd been taking singing lessons and I had taken dance, because I loved to dance, but I had never considered myself a professional at all. I went on this audition as a fluke, and somehow, through the process of going back and dancing, and then going back and singing, I ended up getting the part. I went crazy with that movie. I came to New York and the paparazzi were waiting at the hotel. I know the producers put them up to it. I am basically very private, and I'm really nervous about doing publicity. Every time I set up an interview, I say, "That's it, this is my last one. I'll do this because I committed to doing it, but I'm never doing another one." It was insane.

Lorna Luft was the last star cast. The part played by Connie Stevens was originally meant for Annette Funicello but she was unable to appear as she was filming a peanut butter advertisement that week.
Adrian Zmed had previously played the role of Danny Zuko in the stage version of Grease, a role he would later reprise in the 1990s.

Filming

Scenes at Rydell High School were filmed at Excelsior High School, a recently closed high school in Norwalk, California. Filming took place throughout a 58-day shooting schedule during the autumn of 1981. According to director Birch, the script was still incomplete when filming commenced. Sequences that were filmed but cut during post-production include scenes in which Frenchy helps Michael become a motorcycle rider, and a sequence at the end of the film showing Michael and Stephanie flying off into the sky on a motorcycle.
In the film, after Stephanie wins the contest, it goes on to show the stakeout in the final scene. Originally, there were a few minutes dedicated to a scene in which Michael comes out on stage as Stephanie is exiting the stage, unbeknownst to her that he is the cool rider and he is alive. He attempts to ask her what's wrong and she storms past him and runs off crying, then it cuts to the stakeout. There was a scene within the "Who's that Guy?" number in which Goose accidentally smashes Rhonda's nose at the Bowl-A-Rama door. None of these scenes have been shown since the film's release.

Music

  1. "Back to School Again" – Cast and The Four Tops
  2. "Score Tonight" – T-Birds, Pink Ladies, Cast
  3. "Brad" – Noreen and Doreen
  4. "Cool Rider" – Stephanie
  5. "Reproduction" – Mr. Stuart and Students
  6. "Who's That Guy?" – Michael, T-Birds, Pink Ladies, Cycle Lords, and Cast
  7. "Do It for Our Country" – Louis and Sharon
  8. "Prowlin'" – Johnny and T-Birds
  9. "Charades" – Michael
  10. "Girl for All Seasons" – Sharon, Paulette, Rhonda, and Stephanie
  11. " Turn Back the Hands of Time" – Stephanie and Michael
  12. "Rock-a-Hula Luau " – Cast
  13. "We'll Be Together" – Michael, Stephanie, Johnny, Paulette, and Cast
Featured as background music at Rydell Sport Field:
  1. "Moon River"
Featured as background music at the bowling alley:
  1. "Our Day Will Come" – Ruby & The Romantics
  2. "Rebel Walk" – Duane Eddy
Featured at the beginning:
  1. "Alma Mater" – Instrumental

    Release

Box office

The sequel took in just over $15 million after coming at fifth on opening weekend behind ', ', Rocky III, and Poltergeist.

Critical reception

, the film had a rating of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 34 critics' reviews, with an average rating of 3.6/10. The site's consensus states: "Grease 2 is undeniably stocked with solid songs and well-choreographed dance sequences, but there's no getting around the fact that it's a blatant retread of its far more entertaining predecessor." Janet Maslin for The New York Times condemned the film as "dizzy and slight, with an even more negligible plot than its predecessor had. This time the story can't even masquerade as an excuse for stringing the songs together. Songs? What songs? The numbers in Grease 2 are so hopelessly insubstantial that the cast is forced to burst into melody about pastimes like bowling." Variety, on the other hand, commended the staging of the musical numbers, writing that Patricia Birch has come up with some unusual settings for some of the scenes, and employs some sharp montage to give most of the songs and dances a fair amount of punch." Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 stars out of 4, saying: "This movie just recycles Grease, without the stars, without the energy, without the freshness and without the grease."
However, Pfeiffer received positive notices for her first major role. The New York Times review cited her performance as the "one improvement" on the original film: "Miss Pfeiffer is as gorgeous as any cover girl, and she has a sullen quality that's more fitting to a Grease character than Miss Newton-John's sunniness was." Variety wrote that she was "all anyone could ask for in the looks department, and she fills Olivia Newton-John's shoes and tight pants very well." Pfeiffer told the Los Angeles Times three years later:
Barry Diller of Paramount said that the film "on no level is as good as the first. The quality isn't there." Jim Jacobs described it at the time as "awful... the pits." In an interview 27 years later, Jacobs noted that Grease 2 "still brings a brief frown to his face."

Accolades

Pfeiffer was nominated for a 1983 Young Artist Award in the category of Best Young Motion Picture Actress.
The film was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Picture. Later on, the Stinkers would unveil their picks for the 100 worst films of the 20th century with their "100 Years, 100 Stinkers" list. Grease 2 ranked in the listed bottom 20 at #13.

Remakes

The film's screenplay was adapted in the Kannada feature film Premaloka, starring Ravichandran and Juhi Chawla, released in 1987, which went on to become a blockbuster.

Plans for a third film

In 2003, Olivia Newton-John confirmed that a second sequel was being developed. "They're writing it, and we'll see what happens. If the script looks good, I'll do it. But I haven't seen the script, and it has to be cleverly done."
In 2008, it was reported that Paramount was planning a new sequel to Grease that would debut straight to DVD. However, the project never came to fruition.
In 2019, it was announced that a prequel to the original film entitled Summer Loving with John August attached to write the screenplay was in the works at Paramount.

Stage musical

The film was later adapted into a musical, "Cool Rider", with the script re-written and modified for the stage.