Grease: Critic Reviews

Its sensibility is not tied to the past but to a free-wheeling, well informed, high-spirited present.

There's a surprising strain of filth, too - this is much closer to Hairspray than High School Musical. The message is: burn rubber, have sex, strut about like a chicken. It's one that's hard to resist.

Grease seems kickier now than it did 20 years ago.

Grease holds up for new generations because it captures the enthusiasm of youth and the vibrancy of California's sunshine-and-cars culture.

Just an average musical, pleasant and upbeat and plastic.

Limp, cheaply made.

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.

Travolta is a riot. Alternately swaggering to prove his "coolness" and re-affirming his ability on the dance floor, the actor gives the kind of performance that's perfect for the role.

A dumb but lively rock musical.

I love the film's energy. I love the movie-star charisma of John Travolta in the lead. I love the "am I doing this right?" hesitancy of much of Olivia Newton-John's performance. I love the fact that the film is so unapologetically filthy.

A film that's immortal for its unbridled enthusiasm and top notch production that makes it arguably the best musical ever made...

One of the most commercially successful transfers of a Broadway musical to the big screen, Grease is not a great movie but it's a lot of fun to watch and listen due to superlative cast.

Problematic but ultimately irresistible adaptation of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's hit Broadway musical. [Blu-ray]

...comes to life when Travolta and company are singing and dancing.

Much-loved but somewhat overrated.

Randal Kleiser's 1978 musical, set in the Fifties, has some horrible acting but the kind of exuberance that has made it a cult classic.

Travolta and Newton-John burn up the screen with all the passion of a potato salad while occasionally singing a song you know all the words to because they play it every week in small-town nightclubs.

Good, clean, high-spirited fun.

... a bowdlerized version of the original stage play

An unembarrassed movie musical, something my generation experienced only in Sunday-afternoon movies on TV.

Despite the film's rose-tinted rearview mirrors and Ipana-worthy cheeriness, it's not so much the Wedding Singer of its day as it is the Boogie Nights.

Its flashy opportunism (nostalgia pitched squarely at an audience too young to even recall the era) quickly becomes very irritating.

The story is simple, easy, and fun.

If ever there were a critic-proof movie, a film effectively ingrained into the pop culture world, it's Grease.