Painful in places

Rating: 2/10 (29 March 2015)

I once rented this movie whilst on holiday in Austria, thinking that a mixture of some of my favourite ABBA songs with a stage show that's apparently critically acclaimed could conjure up a very entertaining movie...
...boy I was wrong!
Aside from the fact that pretty much every single ABBA song is decimated by the painful vocal talents (or lack thereof) of Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep, combined with a pretty standard story that, although attempts to take a few odd turns, comes off as very confusing and not very interesting.
So what's the HP Sauce? On a Greek Island, a young girl named Sophie is about to get married, but doesn't know who her father might be apart from three possible names. Sending a letter to each of them requesting they come to the island, all three of them from different backgrounds arrive, to the utter confusion of her mother and their former girlfriend, Donna, who also runs the island's hotel which isn't doing so well financially. What follows is misunderstanding after misunderstanding with the occasional cameo by former ABBA members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.
What's the problems with this movie? The singing for starters. Although Meryl Streep can just about pull off some of the songs (and I do mean some), Pierce Brosnan sounds like a trapped cat, and the other songs aren't given much justice either, mostly having little to do with the story.
The story itself is very confused as well. Aside from being the standard A > B plot of getting the folks back together which you know they're going to do, it throws in a slew of other spontaneous romances from characters that don't even have anything to do with anything. Somehow I get the feeling that this movie was a touch confused as to where it was going, like it was stumbling through the woods without a torch, occasionally bumping into obstructive trees which are in fact mutilated ABBA songs.
On the whole, I really can't recommend it. Although some of the dance scenes can be fun to watch, the songs are horribly sung, the story is as basic as Cheddar Cheese, and the confusing and sudden romances that come in and go away again without any further reference.
Strange, very!