Wednesday 3 September 2008

¡Mamma Mia!

The title says it all. Mamma Mia! Oh My God! ¡$^%^&*%^%%$#!

The title is an expression of disbelief, shock, horror, whatever. The movie certainly delivers that. I'll just remind you at this point that I am a Libran, and so I am physically and mentally incapable of deciding whether I hate something or whether I love it. In the case of Mamma Mia, it's a complete draw: I totally hate it, and I totally love it.

During my trolling around England, I was quite keen to go see it, but they don't make cinemas accessible by public transport anymore: all cinemas are located on greenfield sites on the edge of towns, and if you don't have a car and are too cheap to hire a taxi you can pretty much forget about visiting them. So I decided to keep my carbon footprint (my God, I never even knew I had one till I got to England!) the same size, and wait until I got back to Madrid. I knew it was on in V.O. (Version Original) because MamaDuck had already seen it and loved it and was prepared to go and see it again.

I have previously confessed online that I love the music of ABBA. Really, it is sublime, and stop giggling at the back. I also love Greece, where the movie is set (more specifically it was filmed on Skopelos, where Mr & Mrs Dubaibilly have bought a house and are planning to retire (and where we are supposed to visit in 2010)). The downside is, I more or less hate musicals as a genre; they can work well on stage, but musicals as movies don't normally do it for me.

So, we have a preposterous plot, carefully engineered to introduce the various songs. We have some excellent actors (Meryl Streep, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and many others), none of whom have had outstanding careers as singers for reasons that soon become obvious. And here's this movie: cheesy, tear-jerking, trite, stupid, mad, unbelievable.

Go see it.

4 comments:

Em said...

i loved mamma mia! although i watched it online instead of the cinema.

nzm said...

I haven't seen it yet, but you gave a better review for the movie than my cousin who covered it in this post. He must be the only gay man who doesn't like ABBA - I may have to disown him for that.

leftbanker said...

I haven't seen Mama Mia yet but of course I will. I didn't know the film was set in Greece so that gives me even more reason to go. I lived I Greece for three years and I love everything Greek as well as everything ABBA. The difference being that I'm not ashamed to admit loving everything Greek. ABBA falls under something we have in America called the “Don't ask, don't tell” policy.

Years ago when I was living in Miami my brother came down from Philadelphia for a visit. We were cruising pawn shops around town looking for used CDs (remember those?). We both spotted a copy of ABBA Gold on the shelf at the same time and the battle to decide the next rightful owner of that double CD almost ended in a fistfight (both of us claim to be heterosexual but my brother has really nice hair, so you have to wonder). That was not a day I am particularly proud of but that's the way history is sometimes.

dubaibilly said...

I haven't seen it yet and have no intention of seeing it - I will just bathe in the reflected glory of it having been filmed on my island - well, not actually mine, there are quite a lot of other people who can lay came to bits of it as well. Anyway Keefieboy here looking forward to you and mama duck visiting us in 2010.

Cheers

DB