Abba-solutely awful

Mamma Mia! Or in modern terminology - O.M.G. What were they thinking? They being the people who actually put forward the money to make this movie. The stage production was bad enough. Yes, there is some semblance of a story - albeit not very interesting - but the semblance is just not good enough. Three minutes into this movie, all I could think about was wishing I was watching “Rent” the movie.

That’s how bad it was.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is getting married. She wants nothing more than her father to give her away… But who is her father? She has never known. Donna (Meryl Streep) kept a diary the year she was pregnant with Sophie. After Sophie finds the diary and reads it, she discovers that one of three men (Stellan Skarsgard, Pierce Brosnan, or Colin Firth) could be her father. So what does she do? She invites them all disguising the invite from Donna.

When all three men show up, Donna is thrown for a loop. She’s happy alone. Why did all these men have to come back? Chaos ensues and eventually each man steps up as Sophie’s father. Or at least they all want to give her away. What more could a girl ask for?

Only a Swedish group would set a tale on some remote Greek Island where everyone walks on rooftops and has one lone strand of hair dangling in the wind. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that the story is an excuse to sing the songs and after the first line you forget what exactly you are watching. Some strange music video? A commercial for deoderant? What? The songs are telling their own stories that are so far from the plot of the film that you forget exactly what you are watching.

Abba created many danceable tunes. “Dancing Queen”. “Fernando”. “Money, Money, Money”. (One horrible memory of the film is actually listening to the lyrics of that song. No other song so perfectly captures the fact that a second language speaker wrote it. Abba has succeeded in using every single word in the English language that rhymes with “money”.) And who can forget the ballad “The Winner Takes It All”?

I wish I could forget it. Meryl Streep standing on a cliff in probably the worst costume she’s had to wear since the get-up in “Death Becomes Her” that makes her head look like it’s twisted around three times.

I love Meryl Streep. I think she is probably one of the greatest actresses of all time. But whoever was the cinematographer on this film– Did he have some sort of vendetta against her? Her make-up looks harsh and she’s shot at all the wrong angles. Even her singing sounds horrible in this film and she’s supposed to be a trained singer.

I’m forced to talk about make-up because there really is nothing else to say about this movie. Julie Walters is campy. Christine Baranski has a good voice– too bad she wasn’t Donna. Pierce Brosnan can’t sing to save his life (although with looks like that it doesn’t matter). Amanda Seyfried was recently named one of the up-and-coming actresses under 25. And all I have to say to that is really? Really?

The best part of the movie is when Julie Walters is standing on a small boat getting ready to row herself out to sea. The water is calm and peaceful. Walters goes back and forth, back and forth trying to get her balance and eventually falls out of the boat. Simple comic genius right there, folks.

Save your money. Save gas. Do not drive to see this movie. If you have a hankering to see it, for God’s sake, wait until it comes out on Netflix. Let it at least come to your mailbox and then, only then, are you allowed to make the trip to pick it up.

Thank you for the music silence.

Rachel Oliva writes for the movie blog Reel Spice.

photo credit: David Boyle