Meryl Streep was shockingly mediocre here and her performance was borderline embarrassing. Amanda Seyfried was the only real standout.

Was she the one that looked like a fish?

She was Sophie, the daughter. And the only one who didn't come off as a complete idiot during the poorly choreographed and executed musical numbers.

So now all the Streep hate pours forth!?!?!

Settle Down Bradford, here take your Meds its late bed calls.

Same to you Gullibull, quaff another bottle of Jamesons and enjoy your nightly fisticuffs with the neighbors...

If I could quaff an entire bottle of that I'd be very impressed. Also I'm cool with my neighbours the Murphy's and the Lally's great people.

You take the words out of my mouth with this. That and your grade, I agreed completely.

Meryl Streep sounds like 100 seals being mustard gassed in a Chuck E' Cheese whilst a badly encoded copy of William Hung's Christmas CD plays through blown out speakers at full volume.

I had heard that this was "fun", but didn't feel it at all.

It's perfectly possible to enjoy watching a film that you know is utter shit, just as much as it's possible to hate watching a film you know is very good. It's why I'm perfectly happy watching Streetfighter: The Movie over a film like Requiem for a Dream. Anyone with any sense would acknowledge that Requiem's the better film, doesn't mean I'd pop it in the DVD player if I was looking to have a fun night in with a film.

This, THIS is what becomes the biggest film in UK history, topping titanic?

What a f**cking mess, i loathed every second, i spit on this film. I can't even begin to quantify how much i hated it. I just don't get the great word of mouth at all.

D, easily the worst film i've seen this year. I should probably point out that i do actually like Abba and own a few of their albums.

Finally watched this one and really enjoyed it.

8/10

B-


Well, this was really a big letdown. I used not to really like musicals much, but after the musicals revival started by Moulin Rouge! back in 2001, I kinda got into them. Now I really don't mind fun musicals like Hairspray or Dreamgirls and Mamma Mia! looked a lot like the former. The trailers always made it look like a perfect summer fun musical with its breezy and exuberant atmosphere. I like the songs (in a guilty please kind of way) and the cast seemed to have a blast too.

Well, the film itself was very much a mixed bag. It was not nearly as much fun as musicals like Chicago or Hairspray. So where was the problem? Meryl Streep certainly did her best here, giving life and energy to each of the scenes she was in. She's not a bad singer either. Amanda Seyfried successfully elevated herself with her role to the league of known faces/names (and went on to continue with success stories like Dear John or Letters to Juliet). The potential fathers (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard) were alright, though Brosnan really did not handle the singing scenes well. The locations in Greece were beautiful. So far so good...

I think the main problem lies with the musical numbers. The are just not nearly as energetic, fun and well-filmed as they are in comparable (but better) films like Hairspray. And since this is a musical, failing to produce engaging musical scenes is quite a fatal flaw. The cast and the locations still help the film to somewhat keep its promise about being a harmless somewhat entertaining fun flick, but it never manages to rise above that. The numbers are just too little creative and the whole direction is too sloppy for the movie to be anything more. A missed opportunity.

I thought this thing was fucking terrible.

This was great. Love the Abba music so I was perhaps easy to be pleased, I had a really good time with it. Seyfriend, who've generally not been a fan of before, is mesmerizing in this. My mind wandered a bit towards the end, but at several song highlights during the film I got a bit of the chills too. Very feel good and quite wonderful.

A-

I was about to hit the download button, but I stopped. Argh! This just feels so much like a film you need to see on the big screen. I think it will be shit watching it on a laptop with headphones.

The films is a pretty constant string of songs, so that give it a lot of energetic vibes, it's a typical musical basically. Every film is generally just better on the big screen and the surround sound especially helps with a film like this I think. But if you like Abba then this is a fun film you shouldn't miss really.

I'm indifferent towards Abba. But would totally get into it in a group setting where others are also partaking. I think I might leave it for now.