Nostalgia, when it comes to childhood cinematic favourites, is a beguilingly twofold phenomenon. It can act as a refresher, reminding you with each rewatch why you loved the work so much in the first place. It can bring out the requisite narrative and emotional hues time and time again. But it can also act as a sort of numbing agent for the film’s flaws, clinging to your memories and systematically dying them damask. You may find yourself, as an adult, thinking something along the lines of “Well, I obviously love it, but there’s a lot more wrong with it than I remembered!”

“Certain works of art are as intimately wrapped up with a past life epoch as certain stimuli”

Because the experience of watching a film does not exist in a separate bubble to one’s own emotional life. Certain works of art are as intimately wrapped up with a past life epoch as certain stimuli. I vividly remember watching Grease (1978) as a symbolic act of euphoric freedom towards the end of the school year, possibly because there was a unique joy to the fact that the characters’ own year only seemed to last about ten minutes before they commenced teacher-oriented-cream-pie-hurling without a care in the world. The dance contest, the funfair, the melodramatic pre-titles beach sequence; all of it carries a caffeinated naïveté that continues to remind me of juvenile summer holidays.

My most recent Grease rewatch raised some compelling questions regarding things that went over my head at a younger age. Can someone provide context for Cha-Cha’s whiplash-provoking romantic entanglements? Why exactly is Sandy so hung up on Danny’s flammable-headed self? What did Eugene ever do to anyone other than wear a bow tie? And where are the handcuffs for Vince Fontaine?

“This summer, I challenge you to watch not just what is currently rumoured to be groundbreaking and artistically impressive, but also what tickled you when you were little”

In retrospect, it’s a less-than-impeccable movie musical, full of baffling jokes and fever dream dance numbers and disconcerting bodily movements that are occasionally accompanied by equally disconcerting sounds. But the performances make it endlessly charming and likable, not least the late Olivia Newton-John’s sublime turn as sheltered, hair-bow-sporting sweetheart Sandy. (Special praise, alongside that allocated to John Travolta, Stockard Channing, and co., deserves to go to Michael Tucci’s Sonny, whose exclamations of “GOT ANY SCOTCH TAPE?” and “LET’S GO GIT A SLICAH PIZZA” carry a pre-emptive whiff of meme culture and are still a source of boundless hilarity for my sister and me).

We live in a world where films are understandably reviewed according to craftsmanship. Oscar Winners usually feature accomplished cinematography, well-selected music and at least one stirring monologue. And while such measures of screen excellence are tried, tested and valid, the memories and sensations a film conjures on the part of the layman viewer cannot be underestimated either.

This summer, I challenge you to watch not just what is currently rumoured to be groundbreaking and artistically impressive, but also what tickled you when you were little and excited for the holidays. Whether the film retains its appeal, or whether it now comes across as moderately entertaining dross, the rush will likely be the same.