I've told you about some of my childhood loves before (CATS, Anastasia, etc.), but instead of doing the same thing I did with those two this time around, I'm going to share with you a super fun assignment that I got to do last year for my first year seminar. The assignment was to write a "notes" essay about whatever we wanted. (A "notes" essay is one written in list form. Apparently.)

So, funny story about that: the example that my professor had used was the term "camp." I managed to completely misinterpret everything he said during that class period, and I thought that our topic had to be something that could be considered camp. Naturally, then, I picked Grease 2, one of my all-time favorite movies that has been my one of my favorites for almost my entire life.

Here is that paper. Can we discuss that this is something I actually turned in for a grade? I feel like I wrote a BuzzFeed article. Anyway, enjoy. (Also, my professor loved it. So, yeah. Got a fantastic grade.)

Grease 2 Notes Essay

1.Grease 2 is the 1982 sequel to musical-turned-film Grease (1978), which starred Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta as the story's leading couple. The sequel reprises only a few of the original cast members - mostly side characters - and is led by Michelle Pfieffer and Maxwell Caulfield as Stephanie Zinone and Michael Carrington.

2. The sequel tells essentially the same story that its predecessor did, only flip-flopped. Instead of the leading lady having to change everything about herself in order to be good enough for the guy, it's the guy who has to become what the girl wants.

And while this may not seem like the greatest lesson to be learned from a movie, you can always look at Grease 2 as an A+ effort in the feminist movement. Stephanie is quoted saying, "Maybe I'm tired of being someone's chick." For those of you who have never seen the movie (a tragedy, really), that quote is referencing the fact that, as a Pink Lady, Stephanie is "T-Bird property." Which she's obviously sick of being. Ergo, feminism.

3. You could safely consider Grease 2 a prime example of camp, as well. In fact, as soon as I learned what that term even meant, Grease 2 was the very first thing that popped into my head.

4. Camp, according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a) something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date as to be considered amusing, and/or b) a style or mode of personal or creative expression that is absurdly exaggerated and often fuses elements of high and popular culture.

5. In other words: Grease 2 in a nutshell. If you ask me, its campiness really adds to its charm.

6. Many would argue that this "charm" I speak of does not actually exist.

7. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 22 percent rating based on reviews from 18 critics. The audience rating, however, is 53 percent (which would still be considered a rotten tomato, unfortunately).

8. There are two types of reviews that Grease 2 ever really receives. The first is essentially summed up here (taken from an actual review on IMDB): "If you are an 11-year-old girl and you reviewed this film as "brilliant" or "fun" or "better than the original Grease," you have your fledgling adolescent hormones to blame and you can rest assured that this unyielding fixation with utter rubbish will pass. If, however, you are not a little girl (me), you have absolutely no excuse to suggest that Grease 2 was anything but an inane, artless, slipshod embarrassment for all who participated in its production, distribution, and/or consumption." Yikes.

The second type of review goes about like this: "This movie is appalling in nearly every respect, but there's just something about it - perhaps how brazenly appalling it is - that gives it an almost hypnotic fascination." Let's talk about how accurate this is, I mean...truly.

9. I grew up watching movies like Cats (the musical), Footloose, Annie, Grease, Grease 2, etc. Obviously, I didn't know what 90 percent of the things were that I was watching or hearing, but when I was twelve and our town's Fourth of July parade's theme was Decades, you can bet my best friend and I were dancing to "Greased Lightning" on a float in poodle skirts and tube socks for the local gas station my mom worked at. You can also bet I ran around screaming "Where does the pollen go?" at every family gathering, and no, no one ever told me what that song was actually about.

10. On that note, the greatest experience I've ever had watching Grease 2 was easily the day that my parents decided to pop it in just to see if it still worked - it's an old VHS tape, and it had been years since we watched it - and everything really clicked for the first time. I believe I was in the eighth grade. Let me assure you that the movie is so much more amusing when you know what Johnny Nogerelli was trying to say when he said "mentalstration," and when you're able to put two and two together about the actual meaning of the lyrics for "Score Tonight." And after being reintroduced to this childhood love of mine on that fateful day, I haven't been able to get over it.

11. All of my reasons for loving Grease 2 aside, Pfieffer might be reason enough for anyone else to watch this movie despite every hit it's taken since being released. According to a BuzzFeed article online, here are reasons why:

a. Michelle Pfeiffer is everything.

b. No one has ever been cooler.

c. She's flawless.

d. And unlike Sandy (Newton-John), she knows it.

e. Because "Cool Rider" is "the actual best song" (agreed 300 percent).

f. (I'm adding this one myself) Can we talk about how distracting her little tongue flick is during that scene? Right as she's about to climb the ladder? Seriously, once you notice it, you'll never not notice it. Strange tongue antics have never been so attractive.

12. Fun fact about Michelle Pfeiffer while we're talking about her: after Grease 2 became a critical and commercial failure, Pfeiffer's agent admitted that, because of her role in the movie, she couldn't get any jobs for a while. Nobody wanted to hire her.

Her career wasn't as damaged as Maxwell Caulfield's, though. Nah, it took him a decade to finally get over that stint in his resume.

"Before Grease 2 came out, I was being hailed as the next Richard Gere or John Travolta. However, when Grease 2 flopped, nobody would touch me. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in my face. It took me ten years to get over Grease 2." - Maxwell Caulfield

13. A little known fact about Grease was that it and Grease 2 were the first two films in what was supposed to turn into a four-movie franchise and a television show. The second two movies were supposed to take place in the sixties during the counterculture era. Those ideas were discarded after the sequel's poor box office performance.

14. For comparison's sake, here are some statistics:

a. In its opening weekend, Grease grossed $8,941,717 at the box office. Grease 2 grossed $4,645,411.

b. In the United States, Grease is still the number one highest-grossing musical to date at $188,755,690. Grease 2 is 39th, bringing in only $15,171,476.

c. Grease currently holds an 80 percent rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and as I've already mentioned, Grease 2 holds a 22 percent rating.

I'm going to stop myself before you get the wrong idea about my intentions behind this essay.

15. Despite the Grease franchise never becoming a thing, in 2008 it was reported that Paramount had been planning a third film that would be released directly to DVD, but as of 2014, there have been no new developments there. Queue sad face.

16. Speaking of DVD, you can now purchase a combo pack of both Grease and Grease 2 at Walmart for $7 and if that isn't the greatest deal you've ever been given, you're lying.

17. I think that I'm very protective of this movie, and I think that's because if it were human, it'd be that person that everyone hates. I'm naturally drawn to those kinds of people normally because I generally tend to get along with them most, and I never see what it is that everyone hates about them. They're the kind of people who burst into song about their favorite pastimes (*cough* bowling) and things they learn in science class, the kind of people who experience an entire school year in the span of an hour and fifty-five minutes. They're the kind of people who swallow cigarettes and wear sparkling gold jeggings (things I need: those pants) and who do their homework in bomb shelters. They're the kind of people who "come out of the darkness in the middle of the night, blazing like a mother with a fist of dynamite" and end up driving their motorcycles onto the tops of cars because that's possible.

Really, who wouldn't be protective of that kind of person? They're adorable.

18. And because I've just quoted some lyrics, I'm going to do it again solely because the following gem deserves to make this essay somewhere.

"Now you see just how the stamen gets its lusty dust onto the stigma / and why this frenzied chlorophyllous orgy starts in spring is no enigma!" - from "Reproduction"

19. I've come to the conclusion when I have children in the future, I will raise them on Grease 2 and all of the other musical movies I've been brought up on. I mean, the film admittedly deserves the nose dive it's taken ever since its release, but that certainly doesn't rule out the unavoidable charm due to its absurdities. You can't go wrong with songs like "Cool Rider" and "Score Tonight," and as that BuzzFeed article accurately stated, Michelle Pfieffer really is everything. The Pink Ladies in this movie don't take heat from anybody (dare I mention that my roommate and I are posing as Pink Ladies for Halloween?) as opposed to the dull-in-comparison Pink Ladies from the original Grease.

And sure, we don't get to enjoy John Travolta's savvy hips in any of the dance numbers, but at least someone was smart enough to promote Grease's choreographer to director for the sequel so that we had her on board.

20. So although the majority of the world will never know how to appreciate the utter train wreck that is Grease 2, I know that as long as I have anything to do with it, someone will watch it. Let's be real here. No matter what kind of attention something receives, be it good or bad, it is beneficial. The best example I have of what I mean by that is from an ABC News interview with Miley Cyrus in December 2013. This would have taken place after her MTV VMA performance with Robin Thicke (yes, the famous one with the foam finger). The woman interviewing her had asked if she had any regrets about what she's done in the past year, and this was Miley's response:

"Not at all. It wasn't just shock people to shock people, it really was with, you know, a purpose, I guess, which was to make everyone in the world be talking about me and my music...which, right now, is happening."

Grease 2 may be on a totally different level than Miley Cyrus circa 2013, but what she said holds truth. People were dissing her left and right and could not stop talking about her VMA stunt especially, but it totally helped her out, and she knew it. I feel as though that's how it is and/or will be for Grease 2. I know for certain that if I hadn't been raised on the movie, I still would have ended up seeing it myself based on the things I've seen about it online. It's still tumbling about out there and hopefully will be for a long time.