Last night I had dinner at my sister’s and it was a perfect night for pizza and a movie.  I happened to notice the VHS copy of Grease sitting under her TV and had a couple of thoughts.  First, I thought “Who the hell still has a VHS player? Is that even what they’re called?”  It seems like a term from 1962.  Second, and most importantly, I thought “We must watch this. NOW“.  Thankfully, Steph was in complete agreement with me.  Unfortunately, Jacob was not.  But, it turns out that when faced with the option of either watching Grease or nothing at all, Jacob jumped onboard.  And Lily is too young to really care, so we settled in and within seconds, the kids were totally engrossed.  See? I should tell you that these two would look similarly engrossed watching CSPAN, but still…

Jacob is only 7, so he did ask if this was a ‘kissing’ movie and thankfully, some of the slightly more ‘adult’ moments (Rizzo thinking she was pregnant, some of the lyrics of Grease Lightning…) were over his head.  But all in all, they loved it.  Lily kept commenting on how pretty Sandy was.  It was a good time for them to watch it with us because they are still young enough not to be completely mortified when Steph and I sang along with every song in the entire movie.  And you should know that neither Steph nor I are in ANY way musically inclined, so it was not pretty.

My favourite part of the whole movie?  By far the final scene, when Sandy gets all badass.  Lily kept asking where Sandy was in that scene, and Steph was NOT impressed with my explanation, which went something like this “Well, Lily, Sandy wanted to change for Danny so she would be more his style. But Danny was also trying to change for Sandy, so he was wearing that “Letter” sweater.”  Steph jumped in and made it a parental moment by explaining that you shouldn’t change for anyone, and that Sandy just put on some clothes she thought Danny would like.  I can admit, that’s a better explanation.

I can also admit that perhaps I love this movie only for nostalgic reasons. Let’s face it… there are some questionable moral moments (like when they kind of bully Eugene in the stairwell, not to mention all the smoking and making fun of Sandy…), and it may not have been completely appropriate for a 4 and 7 year old. But, man do I love that movie. I tried to convince Steph that she and her husband should dress like Danny and Sandy in the final scene for a skating Hallowe’en party that we are having at the end of October. Not sure she is fully into that. My other favourite moment? After the movie, hearing Jacob ask my sister “How do they know they’ll always be together?” And “That car didn’t really fly in the end, right? Well, when I grow up, I’m going to invent a car that flies.”

Grease. Inspiring another generation of kids. Classic.

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Tuesdays with Marnie by Marnie