Mamma mia

Well, well, two summer blockbuster films in one week: quite bizarre for me.

David C. and David R. wanted to go; I argued that I didn't really want to see Mamma Mia, but they wanted to, and it sounded pleasant to spend the time with them, so I went.

Well.

I suppose there are a host of reasons why I could expect not to like much of the film, including:

1. I'm not a fan of ABBA.

2.

... well actually that's sort of it, right there.

But that's enough. I do know that one of the only false notes struck in my time in Australia, as I was lamenting being sent away from Sydney, which looked so much like the promised land at the time, was that for some unfathomable reason the natives – practically all of them, as far as I could tell – really, really like ABBA. With no irony. It was, I suppose, the canker in the apple.

Okay, well, back to the present, such as it is: Meryl Streep is excellent, she's the best thing in the film, she's the only one you believe most of the time. Her backup girls, Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, are also fun to watch, although neither one does as much as their fans might have hoped. The only good musical numbers belong to the older women, when they're camping it up and making fun of themselves – everyone else is boring. Extremely boring.

Except, of course, the chorus of Greek [sic] boys. David R. liked the little one with the shaved head (who looked like a quasi-Greek version of a local Geordie lad, which is probably why he liked him – but who was actually, I'm sure, either a Broadway or a West End chorine with a trendoid look). I preferred the big one with the shoulders and the head of hair (whom I suspect was a nice Argentine lad named Juan Pablo di Pace, though it's hard to tell as the choristers rush past). In fact I kept elbowing both or either David when the studly one appeared; so it was rather wonderful when Colin Firth, in a sudden moment of rather unprepared gayness, jumps to embrace him at the end. (And isn't that one in the eye for all those British girls who swooned over Pride and Prejudice.)

Oh, and the brief, completely ridiculous choreography for the lads at the pier was funny. That was about twenty seconds' worth.

So that's another one well off the list (good thing I really don't have a Feature Film List, at least not a current one – that's the problem with buying DVDs, most movies are not worth seeing twice, or once).

But it was nice to see boys being sexy... of course since they were musical chorus boys no doubt they're all straight (ha ha)... and Meryl was actually quite good, almost throughout (although why was her big dramatic solo cut so awkwardly? must have been a lot of takes)... and it's nice to see old people (i.e. in their forties and fifties) finding love and/or sex and lots of fun on a Greek island.

Bodes well for me, I guess.

[PS: it appears that Juan Pablo di etc., a dancer/model/actor, is the same lad who was in the news for objecting to having his genitals airbrushed smaller in the Rigoletto poster. Hmm. A nice Argentine boy, with bells on....]