Recently, a good friend and I took a trip to Millennium Park in downtown Chicago to watching a showing of one of our favorite movies: Grease. It was a beautiful summer night, with hundreds gathered under the stars in T-Bird and Pink Ladies jacket to sing along to the beloved movie. I’ve seen it countless times before but for some reason, I couldn’t help but giggle at how this movie would look if it took place today in 2016. This got me thinking, which turned into this article. Here we go.
Our tale of two high school sweethearts starts no other place then the beach. We meet Danny and Sandy in the midst of their summer love. A montage of frolicking in the sand and passionate make out sessions commence until they come to a bitter truth: summer would end, just like their relationship. Little did they know that they would run into each other once more. But before that happens, a catchy song and animated intro launches.
Welcome to the first day back to school at Rydell High. It’s just like any other: asking the typical How was your summer? and exchanging stories of the past season. We then meet some of our protagonists, the T-Birds (basically the bad boys of high school). And who is the king of the group? None other than our beloved Danny. They talk about basic guy stuff, cars and who they smashed over the summer, before heading off to class. But who do we spot in the background? Sandy! Turns out her family had some last minute plans and she’s finishing her senior year at Rydell. What a small world. Then the arrival of a new group appears: the Pink Ladies. They’re basically like the plastics from Mean Girls, except they wear pink all year round, not just on Wednesdays.
Alas, the anticipated moment of every high schooler’s day arrives: lunch time. Sandy meets up with the Pink Ladies and they all talk about their summers. Now, if this were 2016, everyone would’ve made a Flipagram of all their summer adventures with #summer2k16 and #blessed as their captions. But this movie takes place in the 50’s, pre-technology age, where people actually talked, or in this case sang. Rizzo, the Regina George of The Pink Ladies, discovers that Sandy’s bae is actually her ex and devises a plan, So later that week at the pep rally, Rizzo pulls a Kim-K-exposing-Taylor-Swift move where Sandy sees Danny for the player that he really is.
Like any good friend, Frenchy invites Sandy to a sleepover to forget her boy troubles, but it all goes downhill when she tries to pierce her ears. While Sandy pukes her guts out in the bathroom, the movie transitions into the song “Sandra Dee”. Let’s be real, this song is just a big roast session on how much of a prude Sandy is. But before anyone can react, the T-Birds show up to cause some trouble. Rizzo runs off with Kenickie to hookup while the rest of the girls awe at Marty sugar daddies. This was pre-Tinder so she writes them letters instead of sliding in their DMs, so Sandy grabs some paper and starts singing about her broken heart.
Eventually, Danny wins Sandy back and they go to their school dance together. In the meantime, Frenchy drops out of Rydel and starts beauty school, which it turns out she sucks at. After mistakenly dying her hair pink, she gets a visit from an angel (she was probably having a weird trip) who give her a gigantic roast session on how much of a failure she is. Lesson of the day: don’t drop out of school or the angels will roast you.
So it’s the night of the dance, and it’s lit. Music is booming, feet are moving, hands are jiving. That is until Cha Cha steals Danny away from Sandy and grinds all up on him. What can I say? High school drama. Sandy runs off crying (that’s kind of her thing). Later, Danny takes her out to the drive-in movies to apologize for what happened, but he screws things up again when he tries feeling Sandy up.
At this point in the movie, everyone’s a little depressed. Sandy and Danny split, Rizzo got knocked up, the big car race at Thunder Road has all of Rydel on edge. But fear not, because the T-Birds won the race! Sandy hears of this and realizes that Danny his her true bae, her ride or die. So she devises a little surprise of her own with the help of Frenchy.
It’s the end of the year for the seniors of Rydel High, and things are starting to come back together. Rizzo’s pregnancy was a false alarm and Sandy wows everyone when she shows up to the school carnival in a leather jumpsuit smoking a cig (she would’ve vaped if this were 2016). This kind of contradicts modern day beliefs that you shouldn’t change for a boy, but you have to admit, Sandy had a major glow-up. The whole school sings in rejoice and celebration of the end of the year claiming that they’re always together, even after graduation. Of course, these are lies to the younger generation. In all reality, you never see those people see those people again expect when you decide to creep on their Instagram accounts years later.
Grease may be a little outdated on modern-day beliefs, but it’s a classic and deals with concepts that exist in our ripe year of 2016: teen pregnancies, relationships, academic struggles. If only real life were as easy, where we could sing a song and hop in a flying car to solve our problems.
