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Dom Robinson reviews

Grease: Special Edition

Distributed by
Pioneer Entertainment Europe

Cat.no: PLFEC 37551
Cert: PG
Running time: 106 minutes
Sides: 3 (CLV/CLV/CAV)
Year: 1977
Pressing: 1998
Chapters: 18 (8/9/1)
Sound: Dolby Surround
Widescreen: 2.35:1
Price: £29.99
Extras : The Grease Yearbook

Director:

Randal Kleiser

The Blue Lagoon, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, Flight Of The Navigator

Producers:

Robert Stigwood and Allan Carr

Screenplay and Adaptation:

Bronte Woodard and Allan Carr

Based on the original musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey

Music:

Cast:

Danny: John Travolta

Broken Arrow, Carrie, Face/Off, Get Shorty, Look Who's Talking Trilogy, Michael, Phenomenon, Primary Colors, Pulp Fiction, Saturday Night Fever, White Man's Burden

Sandy: Olivia Newton-John

A Christmas Romance, It's My Party, Xanadu

Rizzo: Stockard Channing

6 Degrees Of Separation, Moll Flanders, Smoke, To Wong Foo, Up Close And Personal

Kenickie: Jeff Conaway

The Dirty Dozen - The Fatal Mission, A Time To Die, TV: "Babylon 5"

Doody: Barry Pearl

Sonny: Michael Tucci

Putzie: Kelly Ward

Frenchy: Didi Conn

Jan: Jamie Donnelly

Marty: Dinah Manoff

Plus special guests appearances from Eve Arden, Frankie Avalon, Joan Blondell, Edd Byrnes, Sid Caesar, Alice Ghostley, Dody Goodman and Sha-Na-Na.

Grease is the word. It's the word that you've heard. It's got groove, it's got meaning and if you've never heard of this film, or the stage play from which it originated, then you're lying.

John Travolta solidified his position as the most versatile and magnetic screen presence of the decade in this film version of the smash hit play. In the late 1980's his screen presence diminished greatly, ending up in low-budget turkeys and big-budget turkeys as well, such as the Look Who's Talking trilogy. It looked like the once-golden boy of Hollywood would never get back into full flow, but it took the recognition of Quentin Tarantino to cast Travolta as hitman Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, for a neglible fee by usual Hollywood standards.

Since then he has risen back to the top and reinvented himself as a cocky action bad-guy in Broken Arrow and Face/Off, a streetwise loanshark in Get Shorty, the romantic lead in Michael and Phenomenon and the President of the USA in Primary Colors.

Recording star Olivia Newton-John made her American film debut as Sandy, Travolta's naive love interest. Despite a few low-budget films and her 1980 well-known Xanadu she has kept a low-profile in Tinsletown, mainly concentrating on her music career.

Of the entire cast, only Didi Conn appeared in the lacklustre sequel, Grease 2, starring a young Michelle Pfeiffer and Dynasty's Maxwell Caulfield.

Being a remastered print, the picture quality is brought into line with that of the films appearing on laserdisc today. Framed at 2.35:1, this widescreen presentation is the only way to watch the film and since it was adapted from a stage musical the entire frame is packed as tightly as the field of vision in a theatre. The dialogue shots are in as much need of the 2.35:1 ratio as a lot of those are group shots of the cast, so if you can't see the whole picture, as on the fullscreen video, you won't see the whole cast.

With a musical packed with tunes you'd expect the soundtrack to be sound invigorating. Well it certainly did when I watched the widescreen video a while back, but on this remastered print the sound during the songs brings a clarity never heard before from the moment the opening title track kicks in. On the other hand, as the Summer Nights song calms down, the "boing" from the comb sounds rather more pronounced than usual...

There are 17 chapters to the film. It could use more, but most of them cover the main musical numbers. A separate one for the end credits would have helped though.

In addition to this we have "The Grease Yearbook", a 17-minute collaboration of interviews and clips from the principal cast and crew members. Of the highlights listed on the back, one wonders if it was copied from the NTSC Laserdisc as apart from this disc not being THX Remastered, there aren't any PAL laserdiscs which are technically able to carry a Dolby Digital soundtrack in addition to the regular Dolby Surround soundtrack due to the amount of space taken up by the better picture quality that PAL has over NTSC. Despite this fact, the "Yearbook" is an average NTSC-to-PAL conversion, but gladly the film comes from a PAL master.

The back cover also boasts a "never-before-seen film clip" but this wasn't pointed out during the "Yearbook" and all clips seen don't look alien to me.

Overall, this is a very entertaining version of the stage play and there shouldn't be anyone who needs any convincing as far as the film goes. It would have been nice to have some more extras - such as a trailer - and what's on offer here could possibly have been squeezed onto two sides of a single disc but it would most likely have resulted in a bad side-break, such as in the middle of a song.

FILM	 		: ****½
PICTURE QUALITY		: *****
SOUND QUALITY		: *****
EXTRAS			: **
-------------------------------
OVERALL			: ****

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1998.

Check out Pioneer's Web site.

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