Mamma Mia

I doubt anyone who knows me would mistake me for an ABBA fan. Fernando not withstanding, I just didn't get their music; it always sounded so insipid to me.

Queenee and I went to see "Mamma Mia" last night with a couple of her friends. It isn't a great movie. It isn't really even a good movie. No matter what you have heard, Pierce Brosnan cannot sing. Not at all. And the dancing isn't really dancing. But if you don't catch yourself smiling, your heart is made of stone. Turn your brain off, dial down your expectations, and go with the flow.

Greece looks amazing in this movie. Meryl Streep is god. She can sing, she can act, she can take weak material and make it look fun. Her daughter is played by Amanda Seyfried, who also has a pretty good singing voice. The only other real voice from the main cast belongs to Christine Baranski. The three men are all good actors, but not singers. Julie Walters isn't a singer either, but she doesn't bother pretending, she just sings the songs like the rest of us do, which means like crap. And except for the SOS number, during which I found myself feeling embarrassed for poor Pierce Brosnan, you mostly forgive the non-singers. After all, it's ABBA, not Cole Porter. The supporting players are all quite good and often very funny.

The Dancing Queen bit was really cute, sweeping up all the women in the area and skipping along waving their hands in the air ... yep, it is dumb, but it's fun. If you are an ABBA fan, you should not miss it, and if you aren't, you won't want to slit your wrists if you find yourself sitting through the movie with someone.

Stick around at the end when the credits roll. Trust me on this.

I had a thought once the movie was over. I said to Queenee that I could see this movie doing the rounds as a participation movie, ala The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but on a much smaller and less messy scale. People would dig out their platform shoes and sequined suits and dance in the aisles and have a blast. Seriously. It could happen. You heard it here first.

Now I need to go see The Dark Knight and Hellboy II to get ABBA out of my head. Those movies are much more my taste.