Abba have long been a guilty pleasure for me. It began back in the 70s when, with the fellow members of the pomp rock band I drummed for, we sneeringly slipped the bass player’s mum’s copy of Arrival onto the turntable, intending to laugh at it; only to be silenced by the majestic 12 string bombast of When I Kissed The Teacher. Those harmonies! That production! And God, the melody! I ended up buying every one of their records (on vinyl naturally) up to and including The Visitors, their dark and difficult swan song.
When I heard that somebody had stitched together a whole collection of Abba songs into a stage musical, I thought, ‘that hmm, that probably won’t work,’ and left it at that. So the phenomenon that is Mamma Mia took me somewhat by surprise. It has gripped the nation and put Abba right back where they belong, at the top of the charts. So what, I wondered, would the movie be like?
Well, it isn’t going to give Paul Thomas Anderson any sleepless nights, that’s for sure. Let’s be honest, it can’t have been easy to come up with a storyline that features so many disparate songs. Usually, these affairs are created the other way round, the music written to tell the story. Here, we’re offered a pretty unlikely tale that occasionally threatens to career off the rails and into the realms of a fairy story, but with plenty of opportunities for the cast members to burst into song.
An older woman being pursued by a younger man. Quick, go into Does Your Mother Know! A former lover trying to get across to the woman he jilted. Oh, that’ll be S.O.S then! You get the general idea.
Meryl Streep plays Donna, former lead singer with girl band, Donna and the Dynamos. She has retreated to an idyllic Greek isle to run a hotel, after having tempestuous affairs with three men. One of them is the father of her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), and as the girl approaches her own wedding day, she rashly invites the three men to attend her wedding, thinking that it’s the only way she can ensure that her father is present. Amazingly, they all turn up in the forms of Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard; and then the fun begins.
Or rather, we are offered a film that works in fits and starts, but more often than not just makes you cringe. If this film were a meal it would be a triple Neopolitan pizza with extra cheese. Occasionally, it is genuinely uplifting – a raucous rendition of Dancing Queen has Ms Streep leading all the women of the village in a Sapphic romp along the beach and it’s surely the high point of the proceedings. A plaintive Slipping Through My Fingers, with Donna helping Sophia prepare for her wedding was pretty affecting too – it wasn’t just me that had tears in my eyes. Was it? WAS IT?
But there are low points too, most of them occurring every time Mr Brosnan opens his mouth and murders yet another Abba classic. And even the fabulous Meryl, who largely does wonders with her thankless role, struggles to emote as she stands on a cliff top at sunset, mugging and wriggling her way through the sublime Winner Takes It All while an impassive Pierce looks on in silent bemusement.
Mind you, this didn’t seem to bother the packed crowd in my local flea pit, who seemed delighted by every twist and turn; and I can’t ever remember a film being brought back for a second run ‘by popular demand’ in that venue before.
In the end, it all comes down to the 22 carat Swedish pop phenomenon that is Abba. Substitute the hits of just about any other band in a vehicle like this and I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t float. Mamma Mia just about gets away with it and those looking for a cheerful and undemanding way to spend an evening might enjoy this one. But be warned. If Abba never floated your boat in the first place, this is going to feel like being slowly tortured to death by violin.
