Grease and Boogie Nights: A Comparative Approach

or, Why I trust Slant Magazine for my Film Reviews:

That Grease was the number-one box-office hit of 1978 just goes to show how hard audiences were willing to try to will the past into the present. Those droves weren't sending Grease up Rocky Horror-style, singing "Who put the coke in the bop-she-bop-she-bop." Similarly, Boogie Nights was directed by an Altman worshipper in a Tarantino era, using disco pyrotechnics and ribaldry-in-mainstream-drag to bring back the era of socially-conscious Hollywood films before '80s materialism and '90s indie hell took the fun out of being incredibly dour. Boogie Nights has its heart in the right place, but whines more than pucker-face Sandy. Grease has no heart and thus can't misplace it, but filling the gaping void is a nonstop arsenal of accidentally memorable non sequiturs, most of them as appropriately effervescent as the script would require if there actually were a script[...]

Secretly, I like it as much as I like deep-fried cheese curds, but when Grease gets remade two decades from now, it will be a Target commercial. And we'll all be fat.

'90s indie hell!? ribaldry-in-mainstream-drag!? I feel 100% linguistically in love w/ these people.[Link]