Grease 2 (1982) and the Relevance of Songs in Musicals

Musicals. You either love them, or you hate them. Or you’re like me and have a very specific set of rules that need to be adhered by for you to like them. Now isn’t the right time or place to get into all of them, though. I’m going to look at one specific rule, one that was relevant in a large way with this week’s movie. This rule (or limitation, some might say) has to do entirely with the music. It has to do with the music’s relevance to a musical’s story.

I used to have a major issue with musicals when characters would randomly break into song without acknowledging that they were doing it. I preferred the musicals where there was some sort of a set-up to the music. The characters were musicians, stuff like that. Or rambunctious kids who sang, while the adults watched on and made comments about how “those darn kids are up to that singing again.” I don’t have an example for that last little bit, but I would have appreciated that sort of thing. I was stubborn about that rule for a long time. That’s not how I am anymore, though I do still usually prefer when things are that way.

My concern recently drifted from diegetic songs to the relevance of a song in pushing the story forward. Maybe saying recently was a little bit of a lie. I’ve had this sort of problem since watching early Glee episodes, before I fell off the show near the end of season 2. Basically, I think that songs should be written or chosen to help push the story or accentuate something within it. They shouldn’t be placeholders because someone thought they should have a song there. And the story should certainly not be written to force the songs in because then things get messy.

I think back to those early days of Glee. The first half season or so, it felt like songs were being chosen that could fit into the story. Either that, or they were random songs that helped build out the world of the show. Everyone just chilling together in the glee room, goofing off and singing some Nelly. Things like that. Audition songs. Performance songs. Yeah, it was mostly diegetic, so it didn’t have to be quite as relevant to the story. It was more about the vibe and fitting that vibe into the moment, emotionally. Well, aside from Finn singing “You’re Having My Baby” to Quinn in front of her family. That one pushed the story forward and was diegetic.

Things turned once the show was picked up for a full season and beyond. There were more songs that weren’t diegetic. However, the biggest difference was that the songs were becoming less influenced by the story, and, instead, were influencing what the story would be. That came to a head, for me at least, in an episode where the gimmick was that all the songs would be Britney Spears songs. It forced a character to reveal that her full name was Britney S. Pierce, which, yeah, is a funny enough dumb joke. But it led the whole episode to be built around Britney Spears songs, when the songs should be chosen to fit in with a story. They were coming at it backwards and it was detrimental to the storytelling. The songs weren’t lifting the story anymore. They weren’t accentuating it or portraying the characters’ emotions. It made everything fall a little flat.

You’re probably reading this and wondering why I just spent a large chunk of this post writing about a television show, when this is a blog about movies. Well, let’s talk about movies. A good example of a musical that used songs to help push the story forward was In the Heights. Yeah, it’s a recent movie. But follow me for a bit here. I can’t think of a song in the movie that didn’t serve a purpose for the story or the characters.

Let’s start with the title song, which opened the movie up. “In the Heights”. It was the song that introduced everything. Usnavi sang about Washington Heights, where the movie was set. He sang about his bodega, an important location to the story. Other characters were introduced during the song, including his cousin Sonny, his best friend Benny, and his love interest Vanessa. It highlighted the characters’ rapport with one another and brought the audience into the energy the movie would provide.

To be fair, In the Heights was based on a stage musical. Most of the songs had been refined to a point where they would be successful on stage and push the musical to be successful. “Benny’s Dispatch” set up the taxi dispatch, one of the most important locations in Washington Heights. “No Me Diga” practically introduced a whole bunch of side characters, as well as delivering some important backstory. “96,000” introduced the lottery ticket that would be an important part of the later story. “Blackout” showed how a power outage could affect the entire community. “Carnaval del Barrio” was a pivotal song for many of the characters going into the final portion of the movie. There were love songs, reprises, and even a couple character send-offs. Every song was important to how the story flowed from beginning to end. Care was put into making them matter beyond just thinking there needed to be some more music.

Grease 2 was a completely different story. I don’t mean that just because a different story was being told. I mean that it didn’t take the same amount of care in making every song matter. There were a few times while watching the movie where I thought “this could be cut out of the movie and absolutely nothing would change.” That’s not how you should feel when watching a movie, let alone a musical where it becomes more abundant that the scene was in there for the sole purpose of adding another song.

Before I get into that, though, I should go over the story. Grease 2 took place at Rydell High, a few years after the events of Grease. Frenchy (Didi Conn) and Eugene (Eddie Deezen) were back. Outside of them, there were a whole new bunch of students. Johnny Nogerelli (Adrian Zmed) was the new leader of the T-Birds, now more a comic-relief gang than actual greasers. Stephanie Zinone (Michelle Pfeiffer) was the new leader of the Pink Ladies. And caught up in a love triangle was Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caufield), an English exchange student.

The opening song of Grease 2 worked well. It was called “Back to School Again” and introduced, or re-introduced for some, both the students and teachers who would be a part of the movie. It set up that the school year was beginning. It set up Rydell High. The Pink Ladies and The T-Birds were introduced. Michael walked off the school bus for the first time and into the world of Rydell High. The pieces were being put in place for what would follow. And it was one of only a few songs that would be that relevant to the story.

For the remainder of Grease 2, it was only the love songs that really helped to push the story forward. Any of the songs where Michael sang to or about Stephanie and any of the songs where Stephanie sang to or about Michael. “Cool Rider” stood out. Michael asked Stephanie out on a date. She rejected him and sang a song about wanting a guy who rode a motorcycle. It led to Michael getting a motorcycle and, somehow, becoming the most talented biker at Rydell overnight. Then there was “(Love Will) Turn Back the Hands of Time,” a song that Stephanie sang during an emotional breakdown when she thought her mystery biker guy was dead. Oh yeah, Michael wore goggles whenever he was on the bike, so nobody knew he was the biker until the end of the movie. Strange choice.

There were some diegetic songs, as well. Rydell High had a big talent show coming up and there were a few scenes of characters auditioning and rehearsing for it. The songs, themselves, weren’t great. But at least they fit within the world. They added something to the movie. The characters were either preparing for or participating in a talent show. There was a reason for the songs to exist.

The problem was with the rest of the songs. Grease 2 was nearly two hours long with about a half hour of dead space in it. I understand that they may have needed a couple extra songs to fill out the soundtrack. The soundtrack for Grease had been super popular. However, these extra songs didn’t seem to fit the story in any way. They were just kind of there, in their own scenes, and then quickly forgotten. There was no reason for the scenes, in terms of the story. They could have been completely removed without changing the trajectory.

One of the most superfluous songs was “Reproduction.” The scene took place in a science class where the high school students learned about pollination between flowers. A song started up where they sang about flowers reproducing before quickly going into double entendres and even direct references to people hooking up. It didn’t push the story forward in any way. It didn’t highlight the characters’ emotions in any way. “Reproduction” was simply a horny song that showed how much of Grease 2 was influenced by the teen sex comedies of the time.

Another scene that highlighted the sequel’s sex comedy influence was the scene that featured the song “Do It For Our Country.” The whole point of the song and the scene was to have one of the supporting T-Birds coerce a high school girl into sex. He took her into a bomb shelter at the school during a drill, attempting to convince her that bombs were falling outside. His friends were making bomb sounds outside the shelter. The whole song felt kind of rapey. It wasn’t something the story led to and wasn’t something that was referenced later in the movie. The scene was only there to add more sex to the story. And it did so in a rather creepy way.

Finally, there was the bowling scene. Grease 2 was not a hangout movie. It was a romance between Michael and Stephanie, with some songs interspersed. It was part sex comedy, because those were big at the time. The bowling scene didn’t really fit into either of those, outside teenagers flirting with each other. And the title of the song, I guess. “Score Tonight” was a song that broke out at the bowling alley where all the teenagers were hanging out. That’s all the scene was. It was people hanging out, bowling, and singing about scoring. Michael wasn’t even there. It didn’t introduce anyone. No new revelations were made. People just bowled. Irrelevant.

As you can see, a few of the songs were irrelevant to the story of Grease 2, the love between Michael and Stephanie. The songs weren’t relevant to the side-story of the rivalry between the T-Birds and the other bike gang. The songs had nothing to do with the talent show that Rydell High was putting on. These songs were one-off scenes that didn’t matter to the overall scheme of things. They could have been edited out of the movie and the same exact stories would have been told in the same exact way. This is where my problem comes in.

I can forgive a bunch of things in a musical. Well, now I can. Ten years younger me, not so much. I can forgive people randomly breaking into song. That’s just part of the form. It’s what happens in musicals. I got over that. I can forgive the extended runtime of musicals. The songs take up a bunch of the time because the average song is a few minutes long and telling a full story would require a bunch of songs. Sure. I can even forgive some bad songs in there because, like any album by any artist, not every song can be a banger.

One thing I can’t forgive, though, is a song that doesn’t mean anything to the musical. I can’t forgive a song that could be completely removed without the musical requiring some sort of reworking. It’s for the same reason as any story, really. If the scene doesn’t matter, the audience will notice, and they will wonder what the point of it is. There is no point. It’s a waste of time for the audience to watch it. It’s a waste of time for that scene to be produced at all. It hurts the pacing of the story. That’s what I can’t forgive: cheapening the quality of the musical for the sake of including a song that, in the end, didn’t even matter.

I think that about does it for the post, so I’ve just got a few notes to close things off:

• Stan Rodarte appeared in Grease 2, as well as Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (week 372) and The Pirate Movie (week 489).
• Lucinda Dickey was a background performer in Grease 2. You might remember her from Breakin’ (week 350) and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (week 350).
• Hillary Carlip, Sandra Gray, and Matt Lattanzi each appeared in Xanadu (week 216) and Grease 2.
• One of the stars of Grease 2 was Michelle Pfeiffer. She was also one of the stars of New Year’s Eve (week 57).
• There were a couple twins in Grease 2. One of them was Liz Sagal, who previously popped up in Howard the Duck (week 75).
• Lorna Luft was in Grease 2 and 54 (week 266).
• Dennis Stewart returned from D.C. Cab (week 293) for Grease 2.
• Grease 2 featured Dody Goodman, who later appeared in Cool as Ice (week 348).
• Christopher McDonald was one of the most recognizable faces in Grease 2. He was just as recognizable in Breakin’ (week 350).
• The great Eddie Deezen was in both Grease 2 and Zapped! (week 438).
• Finally, Vernon Scott popped up in Grease 2. He could recently be seen in 12 Rounds (week 460).
• Have you seen Grease 2? What did you think? What parts of musicals bother you the most? Let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter to complain about… Whatever you want to complain about.
• You can also use Twitter or the comments to let me know about bad movies I should be checking out for this blog. I’m open to all suggestions.
• Pop on by Instagram for other Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
• Now let’s take a quick look at next week. It’s another movie that I doubt most people know. I’m pulling it out of one of those cheap 10 movie packs from the Walmart discount bin. This one is called Hollywood Safari, and I’ll hopefully have it ready to go for next weekend. See you then.