How Grease Was, and Still Is, Problematic

 

Grease was a phenomenon! The 1978 film, based on the hit Broadway musical! Grease is a wonderful film, to discover in childhood and enjoy the rest of your life. 

But, wait a minute!

Childhood? That's a good question. What do you think of when you think of Grease? It was a great film, great music, great dance numbers and a very likeable cast. Perfect for the whole family........

Grease is a film that, as long as I can remember, was always marketed as a "family" film. Well, from my description above it sounds like a pretty damn good family movie. But, let's delve a little deeper into Grease. The film received a PG rating, which thinking about today's standards, yeah pretty average rating for a family movie. But, when you sit down and go to watch Frozen, which is also rated PG, I don't think you'll hear anything about female genitalia. Let's talk about the lyrics in Grease.

"You know that it ain't shit, we'll be getting lots of tit"

"You know that I ain't braggin', she's a real pussy wagon"

"You are supreme, the chicks'll cream for greased lightnin'"

These are the lyrics in the song "Greased Lightnin'". A real show stopper, but let's think about this. First of all, the word "shit" is in the movie more than once, that alone, would have gotten the movie a PG rating. The word "pussy" (not referring to a cat here), I'm not sure if the rating would have gone up with that or not, but the fact that the word is even used. And of course the innuendo of the "chicks'll cream". 

When Grease Live aired in 2016, all 3 of these lyrics were changed. There is a reason they were changed, because this kind of language shouldn't be used in a "family" film. Now, it should be pointed out that I am in no way up tight about any of these, I am just giving this film a glance from all sides. So, this song, right away, should not make this a family film. 

Now, the next bit we are going to talk about is the sexual innuendos. They are everywhere in this movie, and although that alone doesn't make it a "non-family" film, take a good look back at your childhood cartoons. The sexual innuendos have always been there, for 2 reasons: 1, they are humor for the adults watching things like this and 2, they are also there to be discovered when the children who watched originally grow up. But, some of them are stronger than others. Danny saying "bite the weenie, Riz" and Rizzo responding "with relish", that's a pretty crazy one. 

And now, here's one of the biggest things that makes this not a family movie. Abortion. Yes, Rizzo thinks she's pregnant (so, there is teenage pregnancy mentioned in this movie too) and then proceeds to sing a song about it! I mean, name me another family movie that has abortion talks in it. This whole sub-story really shouldn't be in a family movie. I mean, the topic is still very controversial and it's something children wouldn't understand nor should they. 

But, we are not done yet! There is, of course, the obvious topic of Sandy changing at the end. Basically, with Sandy changing her ways to be more like Danny so she "fits in" with the gang. All this does is send the message to young girls that if you want a guy, you better be willing to change so he likes you. You can argue that Danny changed as well, but he took that lettermen's jacket off pretty damn quickly. What I never understood was, Danny clearly liked her, there was no indication that Sandy needed to change his mind. Danny was really the one who needed to change. Danny showed his real side to Sandy over the summer, but when he was back around his friends he felt the peer pressure to act like an asshole to Sandy. Sandy was Sandy throughout the entire film, until the end. Of course, if it didn't end like this we wouldn't have gotten the beautiful lyrics of "You're the One That I Want". 

Finally, and something that has bugged me since I was a kid. In the film, the character of Jan is constantly portrayed in baggy tops. In one of the scenes she's offered ice cream, looks at it like she really wants it, but then shakes her head. And even one of the characters says "I've always thought there was more to you then just fat"... wait, what? Jan is supposed to be fat? Go back and rewatch the movie, because the obviously thin Jan is wearing these big baggies shirts or sweatshirts and then at then end of the film she is wearing a neatly fit green dress. So, that's how Hollywood decided to portray this? Have you ever watched this film and thought to yourself, wow Jan is really fat! No, you don't, because it is clear, it's a thin actress wearing a big shirt. In fact, it took several viewings before I even realized she was supposed to be fat. There is almost no mention of it until that scene at the ice cream parlor. So, why does this bother me? One, it's a terrible way to show that a person is fat. They could have shoved a pillow into the shirt or something, but a big shirt does not mean fat! The second reason is that I feel like there's a problem here, and that problem is sending the wrong message to people. If I didn't even notice it until multiple viewings in, then I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought that. Is that sending a message to young girls that if you dress like that then you're fat? Or unattractive?  Perhaps, I'm diving too deep into this one, but I feel like there's a problem there.

So, what's the verdict. Is Grease a family movie? The answer is yes and no. For all the reasons listed above, this movie is absolutely not a family movie. The language, the vulgarity, the ABORTION song, this isn't a family movie. Now, I understand that the PG-13 rating did not exist in 1978 and that the PG rating got away with showing a man rip his own face off in Poltergeist. That being said, the subject material in Grease should make this a non-family film. 

But, it can be a family movie. If this is a movie that you want to share with your children, then by all means, do it. I was introduced to this film in 1998, when I was 14-years-old. This was during the 20th Anniversary and the film was re-released into theaters. And there was a lot that went over my head at the time and I'm sure most of this stuff would go over any child's head, but let's face it, Grease is problematic, in more ways than one.

He-Man & She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword (1985)

 

"I've got that flying horsey in my sight"

He-Man & the Masters of the Universe was a massive hit toy line and a massive hit animated TV series. He-Man ruled the airwaves in the 80s and it would only make sense to not only make a feature length theatrical film but also a new spin-off series with a new character!

The film follows Price Adam/He-Man as he embarks on the search for his twin sister. Turns out that a new villain by the name of Hordak had kidnapped He-Man's twin sister shortly after birth and taken here to another dimension on a planet called Etherea. No one knows what happened to the little girl, Adora. But, with this information and with a magical sword, He-Man is on his way to find Princess Adora. 

What much can be said of "The Secret of the Sword", it's not necessarily a film for cinemas as there is nothing special enough about the movie for it to warrant a theatrical release, other than the length of the film. The animation remains the same as the TV series. And the reasoning behind this is because the movie is the first 5 episodes of "She-Ra: Princess of Power" edited into a film. The film had to add some things and/or edit out other things in order to keep the flow of the story, so the episodes when aired are slightly different than what appears in the film.

As an overall movie, if you grew up watching He-Man or you're a fan of the TV series, then you will more than likely enjoy this film. If you don't like He-Man or haven never seen the TV series, chances are you probably won't like it. I don't think today's kids could relate the cheap animation and corny characters/storylines.

8 Mile (2002)

 

"You ever get to a point when you gotta stop living up here and start living down here?"

 

2002 must have been the year for singers starring in movies. Just like Britney Spears earlier in the year with "Crossroads", Eminem follows suit with his film debut, "8 Mile". However, unlike Britney Spears, Eminem puts in a stellar performance and this movie is actually really good. 

"8 Mile" follows Jimmy 'B-Rabbit' Smith as he tries putting his life back together. B-Rabbit has to move back in with his mother and little sister and, at the same time, he is trying to get his rapping career off the ground with his attempt, and utter failure at local rap battles. Smith's friends are constantly fighting with the New World led by Papa Doc (Anthony Mackie). Smith's friend Future (Mekhi Phifer)sees Smith's talent and signs him up to battle other rappers again, against Smith's wishes. Smith eventually gets his life back together in order to battle in the final scene.

The reason that "8 Mile" is so good is that Eminem's acting is phenomenal. I believe his emotion and I believe he IS this character. I'm sure it helps that this film is semi-biographical, Eminem did grow up like this, he did have a dysfunctional mother and he did rap battles. The film isn't short on talent either including Academy Award winner Kim Basinger as his mother, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer, Anthony Mackie and Michael Shannon (playing his mother's boyfriend) and directed by Academy Award winner Curtis Hanson. And let's not forget that Eminem, himself, won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for this movie. 

There is very little bad about this movie, if anything. I remember when this movie came out originally, I honestly thought Eminem was going to be an actor and surprisingly he did not. I'd love to see him star in another movie because he really is a good actor.

Crossroads (2002)

 

"All we have is now, and right now we have each other"

 

Crossroads came out in 2002, during Britney Spears's heyday. Younger people may not realize how big Britney Spears was in the early 2000s. It was natural for her to make her way into acting. Problem is, Britney Spears isn't a very good actress.

Directed by Tamra Davis, Crossroads is a very formulaic coming of age film. Lucy (Spears) is a new high school graduate who is under the rule of her father (Dan Aykroyd), all he wants her to do is ignore her social life and become a doctor. Meanwhile, Lucy has broken up with her friends during high school. Her friends consist of Kit (Zoe Saldana) who has become a self-centered model and Mimi (Taryn Manning) who has become pregnant trailer trash. Lucy, now has the reputation of being a goody two shoes. When Mimi brings the trio back together to dig up a time capsule they buried as children, she reveals she will be going across country to go to L.A. for a singing competition. The trio head out with Ben (Anson Mount) who is allegedly a murderer (we later find out it was rumor). And that's pretty much the entire movie.

This is a very bland and (as mentioned before) formulaic. There is nothing in this movie we haven't seen previously in other films. Britney Spears is a cardboard actress (at least in this movie). Taryn Manning plays trailer trash which is a stretch for her from playing previous trailer trash characters. Manning was clearly put on this earth to play trailer trash. Even Zoe Saldana, who is a good actress, is bad in this movie. 

Also, this movie treats pregnancy as a disease. During a karaoke scene (which is only there to promote a single from Britney's 2001 album "Britney") Mimi attempts to sing, which she sucks at, you hear a random guy in the crowd yell out "SHE'S PREGNANT!" and then later on when Dan Aykroyd's character finds Lucy he says to here "This isn't like you, running way... with a PREGNANT GIRL!". I mean, come on! Pregnant women are still women, they can stand and sing, they can travel, it's not something taboo or crazy. Yes, she is a teenager, but she's 18, so what difference does it make?

Overall, this movie isn't very good. With the bland acting and the poor writing, this movie is just a promotional video for Britney Spears and her recent album at the time. That being said, this movie has a special place in my heart as I am a pretty hardcore Britney fan and I was definitely a hardcore fan in 2002. So, I enjoy this movie but I can see its major flaws and recognize this movie as bad.

Wes Craven: The Man, The Legend

I've told the story many, many times over the years but it's time to tell the story again. Way back in 1997, I was a dorky, little fool who really only liked comedies and Disney movies. But, one thing I hated more than anything was horror films. I refused to watch horror films because I just didn't like them. When a little film called Scream came out everyone, everywhere were raving about this movie. And I, for one, just didn't care. Finally, I just gave into peer pressure and finally, reluctantly, sat down to watch this little horror film.

I sat there riveted. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and when the movie was over I realized I had just watched something special. Scream would go on to spawn 3 sequels and a successful 2015 TV series. But, at least in my generation, the film kind of became a joke. So, me saying that this film is special to me and "changed my life" makes me feel kind of goofy. But it did change my life, it completely changed my life.

After seeing "Scream", I made it a mission to see as many horror films as I could so I would understand any of the references in any of the films. And now, almost 20 years later, I get all the references!

You may be asking yourself, why am I even bothering telling this story again? If you really wanted to read the story you could go back and read my "Scream" review from years ago. The reason is because, not only did the film get me into horror films but it introduced me to the person who would go on to become my favorite director and aside from one movie that followed "Scream", I would see every single one of his movies in the theater. That man, was Wes Craven.

Unlike most of the general public, I had never heard of Wes Craven when Scream came out. I had heard of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and knew it involved Freddy Krueger and how he looked but that was it. Didn't know the director or the cast or anything else. But after seeing "Scream" one of the things I did was make it a mission to see more films by Wes Craven. This led me down a path I was never coming back from but enjoying the hell out of.

I spent the next, nearly 20 years, enjoying horror films and changing my passion from nothing to writing. The writing aspect came from Mr. Craven himself as I began to realize he wrote a lot of the films he directed and I found that the films he wrote were far better than the ones he didn't. And so began my passion for writing.

On August 30, 2015 we lost Mr. Craven after a battle with brain cancer. Words could not describe the pain I felt. Wes Craven was a big part of my life through his films. I would watch anything and everything he worked on from his big budget theatrical films to his garbage TV movies to films that he simply produced all the way down to the film "Wes Craven Presents They" which he had absolutely nothing to do with. I felt like I lost a friend and even though I knew the day was eventually coming that he would be gone, I never really thought about that. It had been a dream of mine to meet the man and tell him how much he changed my life and how I majored in writing in college because of his films. I spent many years of my life studying writing because I loved the movies he made. Some might looked at his films as low budget trash, especially films like "The Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes" but I look at them as groundbreaking and very interestingly those films look very tame nowadays compared to the torture-porn crap we have today.

I'm writing this really to just get my feelings out there. I wanted to do this right away the day after he died, but I just couldn't put any of this into words until today. Most people nowadays will remember him for Scream, but he did so much more, he worked on films and TV. He was a director, writer, producer and actor. One of his greatest films he ever made "New Nightmare" brought all of those aspects of him together.

Wes, even though I never got to meet you and tell you this, but you changed my life. You meant so much to me and you will never be forgotten. Not by me and not by the millions of others who were touched by your work as I was. Your legacy lives on and I want to thank you for all the wonderful films you have left us with.

When a Stranger Calls (1979)

"Have you checked the children?"

Before there was "Scream" there was 'The Stranger'...

"When a Stranger Calls" is horror film from the late 1970s that was inspired by a classic urban legend. The babysitter alone in a house being terrorized by a man who keeps calling asking if she's "checked children", only to find out the call is coming from inside the house! And that, ladies & gentlemen, is the first 20 minutes of the film. The rest of the film drags and drags and drags. After the initial 20 minutes of the movie we jump 7 years where we find that the psychopath from the first film has escaped and is now roaming the streets, stalking some ugly middle-aged woman. The film spends a good 40 minutes with this whole thing and it never pays off!

Charles Durning plays a private detective who is tracking down this psycho. After he almost catches him we jump back to Jill (played by Carol Kane) where she is now a stay at home mom with 2 kids. First thing I have to say is, how is Jill old enough to have 2 kids THOSE ages. They look to be at least 7 and 3. We are led to believe that she is a teenager in the beginning of the film and then the film jumps 7 years, which would make her in her early to mid 20s. Just seems kind of odd to me.
Anyway, she and her husband are going out to dinner and leave their kids with a babysitter. Somehow the psycho knows where she lives and what restaurant she will be at and calls her and starts her freaking out all over again. The film ends abruptly and you walk out wondering what the hell you just saw.

The first 20 minutes of the film are amazing, truly terrifying. I am not scared by much, but as I watched this in my dark bedroom in the middle of the night, I found myself clinging to my blankets because it was seriously scary. But after that the film falls apart. The director spends too much time on the killer and his odd obsession with some random middle-aged woman he finds in a bar. As the audience I just didn't give a shit about this story line, especially since it leads to nothing! Once we get back to Jill and her story I feel the film finds itself, but it's literally just rehash of the beginning of the film with Jill now the mother instead of the babysitter.

The film will always be remembered for the first 20 minutes but nothing else, I don't really consider it a classic but it's worth watching at least once.

A Christmas Story 2 (2012)

In 1983, late director Bob Clark (Black Christmas, Porky's) made what some consider the greatest Christmas movie ever made. "A Christmas Story" has gone down in history for that that simple fact; even TBS plays the movie for 24 hours straight on Christmas day. Personally, I feel the film is very overrated, not saying that it's a bad film just overrated. That being said, Warner Brothers in their infinite wisdom decided that what "A Christmas Story" needed was a sequel, almost 30 years later.

Being promoted as "the official sequel to 'A Christmas Story'", Warner Brothers seems to have forgotten that the film already has had TWO sequels before this one: a 1988 TV movie entitled "Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss" and the 1994 film "It Runs in the Family" (most commonly known as "My Summer Story"), but since Warner Brothers didn't make those films I guess they felt they didn't count as sequels and they have completely disregarded them.

Now that that's out of the way lets delve into this bear sized shit of a movie. The story is about Ralphie and he's an annoying 15-year old who wants a car. Him and his stupid friends wreck a car at a dealership and the rest of the movie is all about them trying to come up with $85 to fix the car. Daniel Stern (Home Alone) plays the father in this film and he comes off as a very cold hearted cheapskate. At the end of the film he seems to have redeemed himself and proves to be a loving father, but throughout the rest of the film he's just an asshole. 

The film does what I assume they felt were homages to the original film but in reality they were just blatant rip offs. This film rehashes so much from the original film it baffles me why they even bothered making a "sequel" instead of a "remake". They rehash the tongue to the pole in a rather stupid way by having the same character stick his tongue in a vacuum at a department store and then you get to see his face stretch out inside the tube as some goofy way of making this generation of retarded children laugh. Having Ralphie dress up in a stupid animal costume is rehashed having him dress as a reindeer at a department store. Somehow the leg lamp is back at the very end, though the film never really admits who the hell gave it to the father. So much is rehashed from the original film all the way down to Ralphie's brother getting a space ship for Christmas and sitting on the floor making "vroom" sounds with it (in the original film he gets a blimp and does the same thing).

This film fails so horribly it's not even funny. I didn't expect anything at all from this film but I just wanted to give it a shot. Seeing Daniel Stern embarrass himself in this direct-to-video garbage is terrible. The man made some classic comedies in his day and he has been reduced to this trash. That being said, Stern is the ONLY good thing about this film. He does give a stellar performance but his character is so cynical it's hard to even enjoy it. The only thing this film did well (and I'm using that term lightly) is they got an actor (surprisingly the writer) to sound JUST like Jean Shepard narrating. But something that small and pathetic can't save this useless, unneeded and unwanted sequel to a film that is considered a classic.