Mamma Mia!

That's the funniest Lane review I've ever read. Damn the torpodoes.

 

That may be the worst music video ever.

 

Did the theory account for the Soviets' opinion of ABBA? They were kind of powerful back then. And ABBA's biggest years were during the Carter administration -- hardly the United States' apex of power.

I think the biggest reason for the American warming to ABBA is that, once you get past the often vacuous lyrics, the musicality is much more sophisticated than people originally gave them credit for. I'm not much of an ABBA fan, but Andersson and Ulvaeus' later works -- namely "Chess" and "Kristina fran Duvemala" reveal them to be excellent composers, capable of far more than killer hooks and ultra-catchy pop. But killer hooks and ultra-catchy pop require ample talent, too, as less square musicians like Elvis Costello and Kurt Cobain acknowledged through their admiration of ABBA.

 

Chess is pop-hook-ridden.

 

No doubt, there are plenty of ABBA influences in it.

 

I enjoyed it, it was more "fun" than "good," nice seeing Pierce Brosnan look uncomfortable in a movie for once and Amanda Seyfreid was fantastic. I'd still like to know what was left on the cutting room floor because some of the transitions from scene to scene were pretty jarring.

 

Same way in the play; flow isn't a strength. BTW, I'm glad Name of the Game was left out of the movie; it was silly to have it in the play.

 

The wife and I saw it this afternoon.

I did not know anything about it, other than the basic plot points and that it had a lot of Abba songs in it. I thought it was good, harmless fun. Streep and all the females were fantastic.

I can sense what the shape of the play must have been in the way the movie was "staged." The scenery of the location was dazzling, too.

Brosnan was a brave man to tackle that part. I think he deserves more credit than he gets for at least holding his own.

At the very end, before the encore songs, there's a quick glimpse of some of the bit players and I noted that at least one of the ABBA guys appeared to be in the midst of them. All four of them, maybe, but the scene flashed by too quickly for me to be sure.

 

During the Mamma Mia song, the cast cavorted by the Abba keyboard player.

 

Yeah, my wife wondered about that, too.