A pile of vomit

Rating: 2/10 (26 April 2011)

The only thing that kept me watching this god awful train wreck of a movie was to find out who the girl's damn father was. If I had known that I would never get to find out the answer I could have saved myself 2 hours of unmitigated torment.
Having heard people rave about this movie and not being averse to either ABBA or musicals I decided to give it a try when it came on Swedish TV. Sadly I will regret that decision for quite some time to come. Not only was the WHOLE film over the top with an abundance of unnecessarily shrieking women, the script was abysmal at best. The plot did not flow and seemed only there to serve as an entrance to yet another ABBA song. The last conversation Sophie and her future husband to be have before they get married is one about how neither one knows what they want anymore...next thing we see is them...getting married???
Plot holes and inconsistencies aside the film suffered from big-name cast overkill and aside from Meryl, Seyfield and Brosnan was woefully underused. Some of the singing *cough* Brosnan *cough* made me want to dive under my sofa cushions and not come back out. When Brosnan sings SOS it sounds like he is trying to scrape Catarrh out the back of his throat with a piece of sandpaper, achieving little success. I cannot understand why in a musical film you would need to use talented drama/comedy actors when the vast majority of the plot is based around singing!? Surely using people with a decent set of vocal chords would have been better! It is ABBA after all and as anyone who has tried to howl out the lyrics to Dancing Queen on the karaoke will know, it does not sound good if you cannot sing.
The cinematography was also underused. I cannot think why they staged the whole thing on a Greek island. They could have been anywhere! Add to that the terrible camera angling, lighting and settings and the entire production just smacks of amateurism.
The only reason this film gets two stars is because Meryl Streep was decent and the music is ABBA. Other than that there is nothing positive left to say. I am only glad that the sickly sweet ending didn't make me vomit up my dinner.