Streep and ABBA. And scenery.

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2008)

"I said it once, and I'll say it again. No f***ing ABBA!" Thus spake Bernice, one-third of the female-impersonating lip-synching stage act in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). ABBA were an enormously popular group at the height of their fame in the seventies, and partly for this reason many who might otherwise have simply not cared for them actively detest them, sort of a backlash effect. I have to admit I liked them. I still have three or four of their albums. When the movie Mamma Mia!, based on the hit stage show, came out, I thought, Meryl Streep and the music of ABBA, how can it miss? Well, it was pretty much as I expected, except that it was something like two or three times as good as I expected. The music was great, as expected. Meryl Streep was astounding, magnificent, sublime. She was by turns a child, a goddess, a force of nature, a work of art. I hadn't known she could sing; I guess if I'd thought about it I would have supposed she could do anything she wants. But she far more than holds her own as a vocalist; she's not just an actress who can sing a little, she's a great singer, IMO.
The gorgeous Mediterranean scenery was an unexpected bonus. There's a story, too, one which sounds a little contrived but works well in context. A young woman living with her mother on a Greek island where the mother runs a hotel wonders who her father is. Her mother tells her only that he was a brief fling who disappeared before she knew she was pregnant. The girl steals her mother's diary and learns that her mother had brief affairs with three different men during the appropriate time frame, so she invites all three to her upcoming wedding hoping to learn which of the three is her father. The main characters come in threes: there's the mother and her two old friends who come for the wedding (Streep, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters), the daughter and her two friends who come for the wedding (Amanda Seyfried, Ashley Lilley, Rachel McDowall), and the three former lovers (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard). Rounding it out to an even ten is the groom, played by Dominic Cooper. All are excellent. Brosnan's singing isn't the best, but he makes up for it otherwise, and Brosnan singing is a little like the joke about the dog walking on its hind legs; it isn't how well he does it that matters, it's the fact that he can do it at all. One would suspect that Brosnan had a lot more fun doing this movie than playing James Bond; he certainly got to do more acting. Baranski, who played the mother of Robin Williams's son in The Birdcage (1996), the American remake of La Cage aux Folles (1979), does a very funny and energetic rendition of "Does Your Mother Know?", sung mostly to (or at) the young bartender trying to put a move on her. There's a remarkable number with friends of the groom singing and dancing in swim fins, and the title song is of course superb. However, the highlight, the showstopper, is Streep's extraordinary performance of "The Winner Takes It All", near the end.
There's just enough sentiment to keep things real without ever getting sticky. As a paean to middle-aged love and second chances, it's probably more popular with people of my generation than to the youngsters. As for ABBA, the songs are the same but the production is more show-tune and less slickly pop, so even those who didn't like ABBA might like this movie anyway. However, if you're determined to hate it because you hate ABBA, then there's just no hope.