Mamma Mia: ABBAlicious. [Review]

pO157.

Posted to Media on Fri Aug 01, 2008 at 01:32:23 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

The letter to the editor column this week was filled with aggrieved ABBA fans. They were extremely concerned about alleged editorial bias on the part of the newspaper. The editors assigned an admitted anti-ABBAist to cover opening night of the movie remake of the hit musical. Of course he ended up panning the movie. Determined to interject myself into this hot controversy I bought a matinée ticket.

After sneaking in over 2/3rds+ lb of chocolate in the diplomatic courier pouch of the movie theater (my wife's purse) we entered the movie theater. I was relatively disappointed with the lack of action flicks during the previews* and the Sunday afternoon matinée prices definitely encouraged an older crowd.

Anywho, the movie was interesting although I was disappointed that they clearly deviated from the musical in several places. For example, in the musical each ABBA song was only played once and carefully choreographed to match various moods and scenes. However, the movie clearly used some songs (most notably Gimme Gimme Gimme) in two instances [at the start of the film with the montage of dads getting on the airplanes and during the traditional drunken 20-something girl only drink fest]. Furthermore, it did not feature the classic ABBA song "Knowing me, Knowing You" where Donna's heartthrob explains how his bitch of an ex-wife divorced him and took his children even though the whole thing was arguably his fault for entering in a loveless marriage. This was heavily glossed over and dealt with in the final church scene when he explained his single status in a brief dialog.

The movie glossed over a fair amount of plot development and nuance, and instead turned it into a Pierce Brosnan feelgoodery. It was just unrealistic. In the musical you could expect the Donna/Sam ending to play out as it did due to the character development. In the movie there was more explanation of the gay love affair between Bill and the cabana boy than Donna/Sam. I thought this was sad, although the random old ladies in the audience enjoyed seeing Stellan Skarsgård's ass. I did not.

In conclusion, while I enjoyed the movie I thought the musical version was an order of magnitude better. I would like to say that I imagined it took at least a fifth of whiskey to get Pierce to do the final scene that played as the credits rolled. I never thought he'd be the one to bring Disco back.

Final Rating: B. You may enjoy the movie, but the musical has a higher chance of changing your life.

*For personal reasons, one upcoming movie is definitely worth seeing. It is about a sorority (Zeta something) that hires a retired stripper to teach all the social awkward chicks how to be hot. The tagline "Oh, pledge Zeta, they take anybody!" was hilarious in more than one way. It should be a good movie, at least to see how they trained a Playboy Bunny to handle a saber.