On Michelle Pfeiffer as a High School Feminist Icon in Grease 2 (1982)

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I don’t dream a whole lot. And it’s even rarer that I dream about real people. But I had a dream about Michelle Pfeiffer once.

It was in grad school, around 2009. In the dream, I was on a cruise (I’ve never been on a cruise), and Michelle Pfeiffer was there, drinking something elegant like champagne or a martini. We got to talking, and out of the blue, she told me that she’d sleep with me if I could name four of her films.

What a deal, right? This was my chance. So I smiled, and I started naming those films. Dangerous Minds. Batman Returns. What Lies Beneath.

…And then I froze. I was aghast. Not only could I not pull the name of another film, I couldn’t even speak. Michelle Pfeiffer laughed at me, and without saying a word, she simply walked away.

That’s when I woke up. And I was furious. How could I forget Scarface, or Up Close & Personal? Why did she ask for four titles and not three (or even five)? Why was I mad in real life at the dream version of myself anyway?

All of this is to say: A film that I would not have been able to name is Grease 2. I honestly didn’t even know there was a Grease 2. The first one is pretty good as a film I guess, though the soundtrack is my personal nightmare. But Grease 2 does have one very important thing in it: Michelle Pfeiffer.

Not just a young and vibrant Michelle Pfeiffer, full of fire and singing her heart out. A Michelle Pfeiffer that exhibits the only semblance of feminism to be found in the film.

Before we continue, let me point out that Grease 2 is not exactly a political movie. It’s barely a movie that exists in the real world. Even when you look past all the singin’ and dancin’, it’s completely bizarro. Bikers driving their hogs through a school dance, teachers passing out at their desks, an extremely lavish talent show, an entire musical number about bowling as a euphemism for sex, a class casually walking out on a substitute teacher, even a guy that coaches both football and basketball. (I can’t explain why, but that last thing is particularly wild to me.)

And at the center of it all, you have the signature Pink Ladies from the first film—the girls who are too cool to care if they’re popular—and their romantic counterparts, the T-Birds—the greaser boys who ceremoniously try to score with them and exert a really gross manipulative streak over them.

Except for Michelle Pfeiffer. (Whose character is named Stephanie Zinone, but I’m not going to call her that.) Michelle Pfeiffer is the only true rebel among the Pink Ladies. Not only does she reject her old boyfriend, the T-Bird captain Johnny Nogerelli, she finds herself openly pining for a mysterious new biker dude. (This mysterious biker is her British friend, Michael, who is the cousin of Olivia Newton-John’s Australian character in the first film. There are no rules in the Greaseiverse.)

One might assume that her character’s independence stops there in a film this zany and light, but I think there’s more to it.

Namely, I think there’s more to Michelle Pfeiffer’s sex drive in this film. It would be easy to write her character off as boy-crazy or shallow, but everybody in Grease 2 is horny. I mean the students, the teachers…maybe not the coach, he’s just excited about sports. But Pfeiffer’s character is the one who truly takes agency over her love life. As she tells British Michael, she had this dream ideal of a man, and then one day he appeared.

Also, I have to mention that she works at a mechanic shop called Jake’s Garage, which is not only cool because she’s a girl that knows her car stuff, but because those T-Bird goons have to feel emasculated whenever she drops auto knowledge in front of them.

With all of this in mind, consider also that Grease 2 is Michelle Pfeiffer’s first leading role. The film may have been a critical failure and a tepid box-office return, but she is the brightest star that shined through the mess and left a niche legacy of sorts. It’s no wonder that, just one year later, she would go on to star in Scarface…a film that I’m still mad at my dream self about. (C’mon, man.)

Grease 2 is now streaming on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, and Kanopy, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.