A cure for ABBA-itis.

Rating: 1/10 (16 September 2010)

I happen to enjoy ABBA's music, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
If one was to judge ABBA's music by the deliveries in this movie, ABBA would get no more exposure. People would simply turn them off.
I can imagine that some people thought it was brilliant casting to have Miss Streep as the mother and, especially inspired to have Pierce Brosnan in. I'm sure it looked good on paper.
However, an idea is not always as good in the flesh as in the mind. Miss Streep had fun with this role. I'm glad that someone did. She will never be mistaken for a real singer, but she did hold her own, I guess.
Pierce Brosnan, on the other hand, was WAY out of his element in this one. Wow! Did it show?! As a singer, he makes a great James Bond. I can imagine someone figured that, since Brosnan is Irish, he could do the role. Not all Irish can sing a beautiful tenor - or even sing, for that matter.
The story itself was not all that hot, either. It is truly sad that this girl never knew who her father was, and even sadder that this was never resolved by the end of the film. The idea that her mother had no clue as to who was her daughter's father because she slept with all 3 candidates in such a short amount of time is not the food for comedy. It is fodder for tragedy, at least in the real world.
Miss Balanski seems fated to only play cougar-women. Type casting? At least she could sing and - to a point - dance.
Colin Firth got to play the requisite homosexual (Must there be one in every film?). However, I think this may be the one time that I can understand his character's decision to turn homosexual. After all he did sleep with Streep's character at one time.
The final tragedy was that the young couple, when it came to crunch time, decide to forego marriage and just sail off around the world.
How romantic! How wacked!