Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) has spent a glorious summer at the beach with her dream guy, Danny Zuko (John Travolta). He is handsome, sweet and caring, the perfect boy. Then the summer ends and the two must parts ways.
When the school year starts up again, Danny is a Senior at Rydell High School, along with his friends, the T-Birds, Kenickie (Jeff Conaway), Doody (Barry Pearl), Sonny (Michael Tucci) and Putzie (Kelly Ward). They can't wait to hear what a wild and crazy summer Danny had with this hot chick he met at the beach. Meanwhile, Sandy is starting school at Rydell High, totally unaware that Danny goes to school there. She is quickly taken under wing by Frenchie (Didi Conn), a member of the Pink Ladies, which also includes street-smart Rizzo (Stockard Channing), Marty (Dinah Manoff) and Jan (Jamie Donnelly). The girls, led by Rizzo, set up a surprise meeting between Danny and Sandy at a pep rally and of course, Danny acts all cool and blows Sandy off. Crushed, she turns to the girls for support.
The rest of the semester finds Danny getting jealous when Sandy starts dating the handsome school jock, Tom (Lorenzo Lamas), and him trying to win her back, while sometimes acting like an ass and other times trying to change to be more like the guy she once thought he was. Then wrap this drama up in a bow of gang rivalry that pits the T-Birds and Kenickie's formerly crappy car (now transformed into a hot rodder's dream called Greased Lightning) against the Scorpions and their evil leader, Leo (Dennis Stewart), who challenges Kenickie to a race on Thunder Road for "pinks." To futher complicate things, National Bandstand is going to be filming Rydell's high school dance for their TV show, so naturally, Leo and his trashy girlfriend Cha-Cha (Annette Charles) will make an appearance, although on the arms of Rizzo and Kenickie respectively, since that pair has been fighting.
The final showdown comes in the form of the car race, when Danny has to drive for Kenickie, when he gets bonked on the head. Naturally, watching this race makes Sandy realize how much she loves Danny and becomes the catalyst for both of them to turn into what they think the other one desires. Danny shows up at school fair wearing the letterman's jacket he earned in track while trying to impress Sandy, and Sandy shows up looking like a tramp in skin-tight black spandex with teased-out hair and the pair sings the iconic tune, "You're the One that I Want." Everyone lives happily ever after as the pair fly off into the sky in an awesome red hot rod.
Ok, so it is unrealistic and silly, but watching Grease now was just as much fun as watching it back in the day. While I don't like the idea that the "moral" of this story is that you should change to be what your mate wants you to be, no one can argue as to the infectious nature of the soundtrack. Seeing Frankie Avalon appear to Frenchie as her guardian angel singing "Beauty School Dropout" is just classic stuff. The entire soundtrack is still, to this day, incredible fun. I also found it really entertaining that the cast included actors from back in the day like Joan Blondell, Sid Ceasar, Eve Arden, Dodie Goodman and Fannie Flagg. Fun stuff.
The jump to high def is really most noticeable when the songs kick in. Other than that, I found I had to play with the volume to get it just right, but during the music, it sounded great. I must say that I only noticed the surround sound during the final song of the movie, which struck me as odd.
This release is packed with special features, although they are all the same as the ones featured on the Rockin' Rydell Edition which released in 2006. Still, you get commentary by Director Randal Kleiser and Choreographer Pat Birch, a Sing-Along where you can sing each song with the clip of the movie or turn the Sing-Along on and watch the entire movie with the Sing-Along words below each song. There's a 20 minute featurette on the cast remembering Grease, plus 11 deleted/extended/alternate scenes which were filmed only in black and white, but were still cool to see. The best featurette, in my opinion, is the one covering the 25th Anniversary DVD Launch Party. It was so much fun to see the gang back together after so many years and to hear Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta sing together again. Definitely my favorite one on the dics. You also get short featurettes on the choreography, the cars (and ones like them), plus two brief interviews from the release of the film, and the standard photo galleries and trailer. The photo galleries do include a number of stills from the movie, plus production, etc.
Overall, if you have not added Grease to your collection, then this version of the film is cleaned up beautifully and well worth picking up. If you already have the Rockin' Rydell Edition on DVD, I'm not sure it's worth a purchase. However, if you simply have the DVD version released in 2002 (like I did), this upgrade is definitely worth it because there are far more really good special features included.
