Spitball Army

It made a ton of money in theatres and now that it has been released on video, everybody’s getting a DVD copy as a Christmas gift.  Last week, I passed a wall of empty racks in the video store where their 96 copies had been sitting on release day.  There were only four left.  Reflexively, I grabbed one.  Curiosity compelled me, mainly, but who doesn’t really have a soft spot for ABBA songs.  Besides, I just had to know what all of the fuss was about, and if Pierce Brosnan really is a terrible singer.  I rented it.

The first 45 minutes to an hour were nearly unendurable.  Mamma Mia! follows the standard Hollywood musical formula, with characters singing a song where a mere sentence would suffice, in conveniently improbable settings.  For example:

Harried Woman who runs a Greek resort hotel:  I work so hard with very little rest or money, and I can’t seem to get ahead.

Her two friends, visiting the Greek resort hotel to attend the harried woman’s daughter’s wedding:  What can we do to help you, Harried Woman?

Harried Woman: You can sing backup while I detail all of my mundane chores in a song!

[The three women sing a song, and dance while doing so, using scarves as props.]

Harried Woman looks out of a window and sees her daughter, who is standing atop a cliff, looking out to sea:  (To her two friends) I can’t believe my little girl is getting married.  It seems like only yesterday she was just beginning to walk.  [Harried Woman sings a song about lost innocence.  Daughter climbs over the balcony and into the room, with impeccable timing, to join Harried Woman in a duet of the song’s final chorus.]

Harried Woman and Daughter embrace.  Daughter slips out of the room and, while running down the steps to a beachside cabana, sings a song about her love of running on steps.

And so on.

This film would have been completely without merit if not for the songs.  Some clever person – Benny from ABBA, perhaps – decided that if he took two big handfuls of hit ABBA songs and shuffled them in an agreeable playing order, a plot connecting them would emerge.  That’s what we do when we make a mix tape, isn’t it?  And you can’t hate an ABBA song; when you proclaim your love of ABBA, you feel liberated, and if you say you can’t stand them, everyone knows you’re lying.  So the best thing to do is give in.  Just sing along, or rent the damn DVD.

I have a neighbor who absolutely loves this movie.  I asked her once if she had seen it.  “Twice,” she said.  Not too long after that, the movie came up again in conversation.  “You’ve seen it twice, haven’t you?”  “Oh, no, I’ve been to see it three times in the theatre!”  She got very animated about it.  She held her hands to her heart.  “I just love those songs!  And Meryl Streep is wonderful!!”  Ah, she’s been liberated.  I nodded my head in silent acknowledgement.

Some time around Thanksgiving we were visiting and I told her the movie was coming out soon on DVD.  “But you’ve already seen it a few times, haven’t you?” I asked.  “Five times, maybe six,” she said.  “That’s the only thing I’ve told people I want for Christmas.  The DVD has a sing-along feature, so you can sing with the movie whenever you want to.  Someone is bound to gift it to me; you should come over after Christmas and we’ll watch it!”  A chilling cinematic image of me sitting on my neighbor’s sofa singing “Take a Chance on Me” at the top of my vocal capability ran across the screen in my brain.  A shiver ran down my spine.

When I screened Mamma Mia! in the privacy of my own home last week, I engaged the sing-along feature.  It raised the entertainment value of the film, but I still did not sing along.  If it had had a bouncing ball, I couldn’t have resisted but, sadly, there was no bouncing ball to follow, just highlighted text.

The film continued to run, and my attention drifted.  I started filing bills while listening to the (mainly) music in the next room.  I’d walk into the TV room on a regular basis to see to which new scenic spot on the Greek island the singers had relocated.  It was not until the very end of the movie, while the credits were rolling, that my attention was riveted.  The young female star of the piece, Amanda Seyfried (the Daughter), was singing a solo acoustic version of “Thank You for the Music” with only a piano as accompaniment.  It was lovely.  It was, in fact, the best musical moment of the film, for me.

I jumped online and downloaded the song for 99 cents.  Now, even though the rental DVD has been returned, I can sing along whenever I want to.  It’ll be good practice, in case I get that invitation to watch Mamma Mia! again at my neighbor’s home.