Don't watch it if you love ABBA

Rating: 4/10 (20 July 2018)

"Mamma Mia!" is an American (and more) 105-minute movie from 2008 and the title makes obvious already that the focus here is on the Swedish band ABBA, a highly successful band that just announced a comeback. Their work is never considered among the most influential or best from all time or their era, but with the fun spirit and impact on society, it is the favorite band of oh so many. Right now a sequel is coming to theaters, so I thought it would be a good occasion to finally watch this first film we have here. Director is Phyllida Lloyd and writer is Catherine Johnson, who adapted her own musical book for the screen here and so you could say it's not exactly in favor of these two that the film is still considered their most known and most successful work a decade later. Aside from all the songs, we are getting the story of a young woman about to get married and she invites her three potential fathers for the wedding with her mother not knowing one bit about it. The latter is played by Meryl Streep and the more I see from her, the more disappointed I am. I was actually quite a fan a few years ago. I guess her Golden Globe nomination here can only be explained that she is not as bad a singer as everybody else here, especially the three men who were part of her character's life a long time ago. These are played by a former Bond, a (now) Oscar winner and one of Sweden's finest fitting the subject. But despite their talent, not one of them has the material to shine. It's all about Streep and ABBA I guess, at least the latter can somewhat be justified.
What else is there to say? The film is pretty much what I expected in terms of the quality of the plot, maybe even worse sadly, but there is not one moment that stands out. Baranski is also such a good actress and what we see from her here is just ridiculously embarrassing. The rushed-in gay story line at the end is kinda embarrassing too, but not as embarrassing as these moments when the film really tries to take itself seriously in terms of father-daughter relationships, the daughter not wanting to end up like the mother, the daughter struggling all of a sudden with her soon-to-be husband etc. None of this is working and I wish I could say instead you should just appreciate the movie for the lighter moments, but these are just as weak and often feel fake, especially the many cringeworthy sex references. I am normally a big musical movie lover and I also like ABBA quite a bit, but the performances here are so poor that they make it painfully obvious how empty and vain some ABBA songs are when not given the right approach. It's almost a delight when the film is over and you hear the music from the actual band, not the actors, but of course this will not make up for everything that went wrong during the previous 100 minutes before the closing credits. Not at all. So skip this movie and just watch some old ABBA concert footage instead. I read that the sequel actually got better reviews, so I am a bit curious. But then again, it does not need to be great exactly to turn out better than this one here. Thumbs down without a doubt. Don't watch.