Grease

By VARIETY STAFF

Paramount. Director Randal Kleiser; Producer Robert Stigwood, Allan Carr; Screenplay Bronte Woodard; Camera Bill Butler; Editor John F. Burnett; Music Bill Oakes (sup.); Art Director Phil Jefferies
 
John Travolta
Olivia Newton-John
Stockard Channing
Jeff Conaway
Eve Arden
Joan Blondell
 

Grease has got it, from the outstanding animated titles of John Wilson all the way through the rousing finale as John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John ride off into teenage happiness.

Allan Carr is credited with adapting the 1950s style legituner of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, which Bronte Woodard then fashioned into an excellent screenplay that moves smartly. Director Randal Kleiser and choreographer Patricia Birch stage the sequences with aplomb, providing as necessary the hoke, hand or heart appropriate to the specific moment.

Plot tracks the bumpy romantic road of Travolta and Newton-John, whose summer beach idyll sours when he feels he must revert to finger-snapping cool in the atmosphere of the high school they both wind up attending. Stockard Channing provides a nice contrast to Newton-John in a hard but really nice characterization. Jeff Conaway is very good as the type guy for whom Travolta is a natural leader.

1978: Nomination: Best Song ('Hopelessly Devoted to You')

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1978. Running time: 110 MIN.