Teeny Bombers

By R. S.

GREASE 2 Directed by Patricia Birch Screenplay by Ken Finkleman

What are you going to be when you grow up?" someone asks a member of the T-Birds,. that small, unmenacing and unamusing'motorcycle gang that turns up in this sequel, along with most of the other bad pennies .from Grease. "A burden on society," he replies, not understanding that he and everyone connected with both movies have already achieved his life's ambition. Once again, the cheeky, satirical spirit that animated the hit Broadway show has been dispensed with. The new film, like its predecessor has as its sole aim the corruption of chil dren under the age of 14. Not that it will impair them morally. No, the aim is to generate false, commercialized nostalgia br what is made to seem a simpler, yet more colorful teen time than their own. The movie strains and strains for the effect Gregory's Girl achieves without trying, perhaps did not consciously intend.

To this end, Grease 2 has assembled bloodless pastiches of 20-year-old pop music, reduced antique dance styles to their simplest components, ignored the authentic texture of language, manners and style except for their most obvious elements. The story is of the same cali ber: Michael, an English lad (Maxwell Caulfield), falls in love with Stephanie (Michelle Pfeiffer), leader of the T-Birds' hangers-on, the Pink Ladies. Her heart, however, does wheelies for him only when he dresses up as a mysteriously masked motorcyclist, a sort of Lone Ranger on a hawg. He does not reveal his true identity to her until the concluding production number, although the audience is in on the secret all along. Pfeiffer is pretty and has a cer tain spirit about her, but the vacant Caulfield is surely the least promising newcomer since Pia Zadora. The director is Patricia Birch, who choreographed both the Broadway show and the first film. She cuts too much too fast, works too nervously in the musical staging, and veers from the peculiar to the pedestrian in the straight scenes. There is no security in her vision, but then, the whole movie seems to be nothing more than an excuse for a sound-track album.

At one point, one of the T-Birds leads a Pink Lady into a fallout shelter in the hope of making out with her there. He explains that the place is for use in case of "nucular." "Nuclear," he is corrected. "Nucular, nuclear, a bomb is still a bomb," he replies. You said it, kid. -- RS.

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