Why did this movie flop??

I love the movie but the music didn't match the era the film represented. The movie was made in 1982 but was meant to be represent 1961.
Michelle Pfieffer's "Cool Rider" sounded so 80s.

WHY?! Because it wasn't the original cast...the SAME people from before! Sequels are only good when its the same cast from the FIRST! I mean they could've all been together again in COLLEGE next since they graduated high school in the end in that first one!

Too many reasons, but the biggest is the way this gen of T-Boids are wimps.

Whereas it's a good idea to replace *singular* characters with direct opposites (M*A*S*H: B.J for Trap, Charles for Burns, Potter for Henry), it didn't work here because the T-Birds should have still been tough enough to at least not to be punching bags. Danny and Kenickie were tough and stood up to Balmudo and his thugs without fear. Watching these 'Birds wimp out is tough to watch.

I like Adrian Zmed, but he was purely wrong for this movie and the character was also badly written.

Another big reason was the soundtrack. And while many lament the fact that Grease II sounds 80s, let's not forget the Bee Gees penned title song for Grease with Frankie Valli. That song playing during the opening credits was so strong that it just set the stage for something magical, and that had a late 70s contemporary sound to it.

And while this didn't affect Grease IIs crappiness, why didn't they have another guy sub Caufield's vocals? There's not enough echo or buried vocals to save his singing. Today, autotune would at least have kept him on pitch. Tough to listen to; particularly Masquerade.

I watched it for the first time in decades today having caught the original on TV last week.

Flipping from one to the other, Grease 2 looks quite low budget (like an episode of Fame) and just lacks that professional gloss of the first one: The acting is more 'stagey', the songs weren't particularly memorable or well produced, and the cast not as good vocalists at the first time around. This was most obvious in the 'Girl for All Seasons' song where the sound mastering dropped away, making the vocals sound like they've 'shrunk' in volume (the 'ah-ah-aaaah' parts into the next line). Though that was the best song otherwise.

It killed a couple hours though, so wasn't a total write off, just suffered from the standard we've-been-here-before curse of most sequels.

I'd say the music was the biggest reason. I watched Grease 2 about ten years ago, shortly after Grease, and it was shocking to see the dropoff in quality. Michelle Pfeiffer is a very good actress but not in this film. But none of the actors in Grease 2 were very good. And the first film had tremendous energy whereas the second was flat.

Had Grease 2 come out in, say, 1980, it might have had a chance to do better, even without the major stars.

But by 1982, anything that called back to 1978 (and even worse, taking place in the late 1950s-early 1960s) was laughably viewed as ancient history. It was competing in the cinema with movies like Blade Runner, and on the pop charts with bands like A Flock of Seagulls.

I saw the original movie in the theatre in 1978. It was one of those movies that EVERYBODY saw. To this day I have never met anyone who saw Grease 2 in the theatre. It's one of the ultimate examples of cinematic obsolescence and irrelevance.

Big fan of the first movie and I, for one, don't care about stars, but this movie just didn't have the pull the original did. The songs and the storyline were dumb. It really bored me so much. There were only 3 or 4 people in the theater. That should have been a clue to how bad the movie was going to be.

Except for the opening number and a few other short scenes, the movie was a complete letdown. They made an inferior movie just to make money and it backfired.