No you did not read that wrong, today I am seeing Grease.
Last week when I got home from my legendary viewing of Godzilla vs Kong several points were raised on my arrival:
Ah the chef has arrived! (I was cooking dinner)
Various morsels of small talk
Shall we go cinema on Tuesday? [Mom]
Yes [Me], Whats on? [Mom], Have a look [Me], OK…Grease? [Mom], OK [Me]
Have you had a shave? You’ve got that look your Dad has when he shaves…..plucked. [obviously Mom again, she’s mildly cretinous]
And by the way the dinner I made was superb; cod fillet with potted shrimp and wild garlic asparagus, happy to include a recipe for anyone interested.
So, after a decade off the Star City sauce I’m back within a week for, of all bloody films, Grease. Genuinely can’t believe I’m in this situation. If you’d have told me 10 years ago that I’d be seeing Grease with my mom at the cinema I’d have spat at you.
You’ve all seen this right? Does anyone need a synopsis? Anyone? Anyone? Ferris Bueller? Anyone? Quick reminder then: a gang of lecherous 30 year olds hang around a high school panting over girls and occasionally sing excellent songs.
The ’T-birds’ (tragic gang name) give all the nice people a hard time for pretty much no reason and in the end even Eugene is better at throwing pies. They’re not good at literally anything so they just lurk on the sidelines trying to banter. This is pretty much a 1950’s version of The Inbetweeners now I think of it. They’re a posse of pain-in-the-arses if ever there was one.
Spoiler alert, the moral of the story is; if you’re a girl and a guy fancies you but he’s a bit hesitant, put on some tight trousers and he will literally crawl on his hands and knees for you. But thank god Sandy did have the glow up… it came just in time after one of the biggest twists in the film. After a life of cool-guy swagger and saying “ahoo-hoo-hoo” instead of laughing, Danny Zuko changes his ways and emerges on screen wearing, of all things, a cardigan. He was almost unrecognisable, but after seeing Sandy in a state he deemed fit for Zuko consumption, he tosses aside the cardigan, revealing his true identity before foaming at the mouth and boot-skooting through the final scene. Marvellous.
Can I just shock you? I’m about to compare this film to Bait. Only in the sense that I’ve watched both so many times that each on-screen mannerism and movement is locked into my memory. With Bait it was deliberate (I love the film so watched it repeatedly). With Grease it was not deliberate (my mom loves the film so watched it repeatedly). Misspent youth indeed.
No cinema experience can be labelled a bad one if it has a positive effect somewhere along the way. You can’t be too miffed with a film if afterwards a chap is grinning is head off...the chap in this instance being my mother. She was singing the songs at the top of her voice all the way home, bless her.
Rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong, remembered forever as shoobop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom. Chang chang changitty chang shoobop.
That’s the way it should be, wha oooh, yeah. Then they fly off in a car and it was all a dream.
I think that’s all I want to say on the matter.
