Nothing special

Rating: 5/10 (28 December 2008)

Once I began to hear that they were going to do a movie named "Mamma Mia" and that its soundtrack would consist mostly in ABBA's songs, I was curious to see what would it be like. I am one of the greatest fans of ABBA and thought that this would be a biographical movie. While watching the movie, I realized this is no biography at all. Instead, this is a movie adaptation of the stage musical "Mamma Mia" based on ABBA's songs, which opened in 1999. Until I found out about that, I even though that this was probably a story about fans of ABBA, people that liked their songs, so they sang it.
I never saw the stage musical in question, but I found the movie silly and mediocre. It's not all that bad comparing to most movies of this generation, but it's not my tea cup either. The movie itself is kinda pathetic. Plus, I think they should have made a biographical movie about ABBA. That would have been a more interesting idea for me and possibly for many ABBA's fans around the world. True, there's always the Internet to search for information about ABBA or any other musical band. Even if I have an idea about ABBA's story, I still think it would be interesting to see a biographical film of them. Something like they did with Ritchie Valens in the 1987 film "La Bamba", for example.
The movie's cast includes Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Amanda Seyfried, for example. No one is especially great in their performances, both as actors and as singers. Not even the overrated Meryl Streep. Nevertheless, Amanda Seyfried is very pretty in this.
The story takes place in a Greek island named Skopelos. The Greek scenario is beautiful and quite exotic. There are also some great vistas of the immense sea and the Greek island itself.
As for the soundtrack, there is a reasonable number of ABBA's songs. Many of these new versions aren't bad but they're far from being great. They just don't hold a candle for the original versions. The original versions are timeless classics and there will never be anything like them.
But, back to the movie, in these new versions they seem to transform some of ABBA's saddest songs into jolly songs, which is a bit strange. Not to mention that they made minor changes in the lyrics of some songs. Any ABBA fan who grew up with their songs notices that.
Strange that Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus themselves are two of the executive producers of this movie. Even the actor Tom Hanks is one of the executive producers. Well, it doesn't matter. This is not a worthy movie.