Grease may have been the word, but Grease 2 is the turd.

If Grease was a slick, nostalgia-drenched jukebox party, Grease 2 is the kind of off-key, shambolic karaoke performance that makes you want to unplug the machine and flee the bar. This glorified fan-fiction sequel never stood a chance. With John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, and director Randal Kleiser all sensibly jumping ship, Paramount charged ahead anyway, handing the reins to choreographer Patricia Birch – because apparently, knowing how to block a dance number is the same as knowing how to make a movie. The result is a cinematic catastrophe that misunderstands everything that made Grease work while embarrassing itself in new and horrifying ways.

There are sequels that fail, and then there are sequels that feel like an elaborate prank on their audience. Grease 2 takes the original’s high school fantasy, strips away the charm, and replaces it with aggressive confusion. The plot inverts the Grease formula: this time, it’s the girl (Michelle Pfeiffer’s effortlessly cool Stephanie Zinone) who needs convincing, while the boy (Maxwell Caulfield’s charisma-vacuum Michael Carrington) embarks on a ludicrous leather-clad transformation. No one involved seems remotely interested in making it work.

Pfeiffer is on a completely different level from anyone or anything else, much, much better than the film she’s stuck in. She plays Stephanie like a woman who wandered in from the future, fully aware that she’ll soon be starring in Scarface and leaving this disaster behind. The rest of the cast appears to be competing to see who can be the most unconvincing teenager ever committed to celluloid. If Grease pushed credibility with its thirty-somethings playing high schoolers, Grease 2 sets a new bar for geriatricality. Adrian Zmed’s T-Bird leader Johnny Nogerelli and Christopher McDonald’s Goose McKenzie look like men closer to their first prostate exam than their first parking-lot finger-bang and as for Lorna Luft’s Pink Lady Paulette, she looks like she should be dropping her own kids off at Rydel rather than ruling the school. The PTA maybe, but definitely not the school. The sheer cognitive dissonance of watching these ageing adults bicker over teenage romance and limply cautious motorcycling makes the film feel less like a coming-of-age story and more like a mid-life crisis set to middling music.

Where Grease delivered era-appropriate (or close enough), irresistibly catchy anthems, Grease 2 offers us a soundtrack where the lyricist is the wall of a boys’ graffiti-covered toilet cubicle. Cool Rider is salvaged only by Pfeiffer’s commitment to the number and the opening Back To School Again isn’t without its charm although the ramshackle ensemble belies the fact this film was directed by a choreographer. Reproduction turns a sex-ed lesson into an unhinged has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed assault on human decency while Do It for Our Country is a deeply unsettling attempt at sexual comedy that plays like an alt-right YouTube skit written by someone who thinks coercion and warfare are romantic. Even Score Tonight turns bowling into an uncomfortably sweaty double entendre. Grease 2 may be aiming for provocative and liberated but lands somewhere nearer embarrassing and desperate.

Maxwell Caulfield, playing a Carrington years before he would play a Colby, delivers a pretty-boy performance so stiff it could well double as his upper-lipped British accent. He’s meant to be the swoon-worthy romantic lead, but Grease 2 gives him precisely zero substance to work with. Watching him try to pull off the mysterious ‘Cool Rider’ act is excruciating. The film expects us to believe that donning a leather jacket and a pair of goggles transforms him into an irresistible, unrecognisable heartthrob, but the reality is more “man who just discovered eBay sells motorcycle helmets and learned to ride his bike in one afternoon.” His “motorcycle cool” is milquetoast at best, his chemistry with Pfeiffer is non-existent, and their romance has none of the Danny/ Sandy electricity – or credibility.

The returning cast members barely make a dent. Frenchy (Didi Conn) exists solely as a bridge between the films, then vanishes without explanation about two thirds of the way through. Eve Arden, Sid Caesar, and the rest of the Rydell faculty appear just long enough to remind everyone how much better Grease was, albeit looking increasingly confused, before slinking off to preserve what’s left of their dignity.

Some films get rediscovered because they were ahead of their time. Grease 2 endures because bad movie aficionados love a good trainwreck, and this one happens to be decked out in pink satin jackets, biker leathers and a complete and utter lack of awareness. It’s the kind of sequel that makes you appreciate the original more by sheer force of contrast. The only true winner here is Michelle Pfeiffer, radiating star power even as the film collapses under its own misguided ambition. If Grease 2 has a lasting legacy, it’s that it at least didn’t abort the career launch of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. The rest of it belongs in the bargain bin of bad ideas, right where it started.