Pokematic Reviews Grease Live on FOX

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Grease Live, the 3 hour television extravaganza on FOX Sunday, replacing regularly scheduled programming like Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers. I want to go on record saying I don’t hate musicals or Grease; I was in the pit in High School for 42^nd Street, I have Grease on VHS, and I enjoy “We Go Together.” I am a little salty this happened on the one day a week I watch FOX, and since there was a football game last Sunday I haven’t been able to watch my FOX shows 2 weeks in a row, but I’m going to do my best to review the small amount of Grease Live on its own. I’m not going to review “the musical Grease,” so no story or song analysis, but instead I’m going to review airing a live stage production on prime time network television.

I’m going to start out by saying I didn’t watch the entire 3 hour event. Honestly I wasn’t planning on watching it at all. It’s been advertised for like 3 months now, probably more. Even with the advertising, I’m like “woopee, I get the chance to watch a stage production of Grease on TV without the original cast from the iconic movie, that’s exactly how I want to spend an evening, NOT!” Yeah, I had zero interest in watching this. Sure, I’m not a fan of Grease (I don’t hate it but I don’t exactly like it either), or musicals for that matter, so I’m not exactly the target audience, so I don’t really fault it for that. However, I was disappointed to find out that it was happening during my normal FOX Sunday, so I had even more disinterest. But a lack of anything else on and morbid curiosity got me to watch the final 30 minutes. So, what did I think of this “Television Extravaganza?”

Well right off the bat I noticed that the production value was SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the movie. This is to be expected because it’s a live stage production with stage sets. Now I like stage productions; they immerse you in the story in ways that the screen cannot; mainly that the actors are in the same room as you and the action is happening literally hundreds of feet in front of you live. You can’t get that with movies or TV shows. However, the sets don’t look nearly as good as they do on movies and TV shows because they have to fit on a stage. However, one accepts that because of the limitations of a live production happing right in front of you. TV and movies have more realistic sets at the expense of the action not literally happening hundreds of feet in front of you. With this however, you get both of the drawbacks with none of the benefits; the sets look fake and the action is not happening in the same room as you. It’s REALLY distracting, especially with the race scene. It was obvious that it was just lighting and fog being blown on the cars. That looks fine live in person because it’s a 100 square foot stage, but it just looks cheap on TV. Like, I get that the point is to have a live production professionally recorded and broadcasted live, so everyone that isn’t there to watch it still can, but it just doesn’t feel right.

Next, the actors. I don’t know about you, but when I watch Grease on a screen (not live in person but on TV or a movie screen), I want Travolta and the other iconic cast members. I don’t want these other guys. Maybe it’s just me, but it was the movie cast that made Grease a household musical recognized by everyone, and that’s who I want to see portray Danny, Sandy, Riz, and everyone else. I heard that Vanessa Huggens was in this, but I still don’t really care. If I was watching this live in theater I would be able to look beyond the fact that those people aren’t the movie actors (because that’s now stage productions are), but since I’m watching this in my living room, I’m left asking “where’s the real cast?” From the small amount I watched they did a pretty good job of portraying these characters, but it still didn’t feel right because of the medium I was watching it on.

Next, the whole “3 hour event” thing. The movie has a run time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, and that’s with edits and multiple takes, so lets assume the play would run 2 hours. This means that there was an hour of ads, and also asks a rather long time to keep our attention. It just doesn’t sit right for me, especially when there was some acting that was a little hokey.

I should mention a major positive, and that’s the cinematography and camera work. This happened live, and there was a lot of dynamic camera work. I was really impressed with how little the camera shook, how fluid the transitions were, and how it didn’t interfere with all the live action happening on screen. Having done camera work before, I can really appreciate this.

But now comes the million dollar question, why does this exist? Who was asking for “Grease Live on Fox?” This kind of feels like “Peter Pan Live 2.0” (that’s a reference to NBC’s 2014 television extravaganza Peter Pan Live) in that it’s the networks trying to be different and make a big live performance to drum up ratings but no one really cares. I just looked on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, and Peter Pan Live is rated between 50% and 60%. I get that Grease is cooler than Peter Pan, and it’s a bit early to get aggregated review scores (look at me being on the front line), but I’m still left wondering if this really did bring in all the ratings that FOX was hoping for. Honestly, I kind of doubt it. Peter Pan Live was a bust for NBC, and an entertainment commentator I follow said “when we have cable channels give us shows like Breaking Bad and we have network channels give us Peter Pan Live it’s no wonder that cable is more popular than network.” And really that’s what I felt like with Grease Live; “why watch this when I can watch cable programing?” The answer for that being “there’s nothing on cable, so that’s why I’m watching the last 30 minutes.” While twitter seemed to be rather impressed with it, and we’ll find out what the aggregate reviews say in the coming days, but this one critic’s opinion is not impressed, and would rather have his regularly scheduled FOX Sunday content. I don't want to watch live stage productions on TV. That kind of defeats the purpose of watching a live production.

Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.