Reel Thoughts: ABBA-cadabra!

If you don’t like ABBA, you have Australia to blame for their resurgent popularity. Would the Swedish pop group have had such a comeback without Toni Collette’s marriage-obsessed Muriel’s Wedding and the ABBA-riffic Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? Why, even the Broadway posters for Mamma Mia! were a direct rip-off of Muriel's.

Of course, once it opened, Mamma Mia! became a worldwide sensation, easily one of the best “jukebox musicals” of all time. The reason it succeeds onstage, even in fickle Las Vegas where it has outlived about a half dozen other Broadway imports, is that the wafer-thin story is just framework enough to hang ABBA’s infectious hits. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel like a tired retread of what it’s celebrating, like All Shook Up did.

The film version is extremely exciting, mostly due to its all-star cast and spectacular Greek locations. Opened up and blown up on the big screen, some of what works on stage feels flat on film. The other problem is that now, you really get the chance to hear the lyrics, and it reminds you that English wasn’t really ABBA’s first language. No amount of song selling on Christine Baranski and Julie Walters’ parts will improve the inherent silliness of “Chiquitita”; and much as I adored Meryl Streep’s heartfelt rendition of “The Winner Takes It All”, after the fourth repetition of the same lyrics, you start to feel a little bad for her -- let the poor woman finish the song, already!

The story of Mamma Mia! takes place on a magically beautiful Greek Island where Donna (Streep) is running an inn and preparing for her daughter Sophie’s wedding. Sophie, played with charming sweetness by Amanda Seyfried, is determined to have her father give her away, despite never having met him or even knowing his name. Reading her Mom’s diary, she narrows it down to three men with whom Donna “dot, dot, dotted,” and Sophie invites them all to her wedding. Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård play the prospective papas, while Baranski and Walters play Donna’s best friends and former back-up singers (when they were “Donna and the Dynamos”).

The film is set to every ABBA song you’ve ever heard, and a few you haven’t. Donna and Sophie bond while confronting the past, and everyone finds love in one way or another. My favorite thing about the film and show is the way it focuses on the middle-aged women and their supportive friendship. The music may not always be equal to the quality of the people singing it (especially Streep), but everyone is clearly having a ball, and you will, too.

UPDATE: Mamma Mia! is now available on DVD and Blu-rayfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

MD Poll: ABBA-licious Movie Music

The inherently danceable songs of ABBA survived the death of disco, stood the test of time, and even provided a few memorable moments in movie music.

Who could forget Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths pulling of an impressive recreation of "Waterloo" in Muriel's Wedding? Or how about Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce lip-synching it up to "Mamma Mia" in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (which also included Terence Stamp's classic retort, "No more f***ing ABBA"). And before all that: ABBA: The Movie.

Which leads us to Mamma Mia! the movie, as in the movie version of the international stage sensation, in theaters July 18. And, as the soundtrack albumis about to be released next Tuesday, our anticipation of the likes of Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth warbling the ABBA catalog of hits grows (no need to wait for Amanda Seyfried though ... you can hear -- and see -- her "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" right here).

In the meantime, brush up on your Anni-Frid/Benny/ Björn/Agnetha and pick your favorite ABBA song in this week's MD Poll, located in the sidebar at right. Check back in two weeks (the day Mamma Mia! hits theaters) for the results.

And for more Mamma Mia! fun, visit the movie's official website and MySpace page.

UPDATE: This poll is now closed; click here for the results, and click here to vote in the latest MD Poll.

Monthly Wallpaper - June 2008: Queer Cinema

Starting a new tradition, Movie Dearest will celebrate Gay Pride month every June with a special calendar wallpaper tribute to some of our favorite GLBT-themed movies of all time.

The 2008 edition features such classics of queer cinema as Beautiful Thing, The Times of Harvey Milk, Philadelphia, Boys Don't Cry, Personal Best, Gods and Monsters, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Latter Days, Trick, Bound, Transamerica, Desert Hearts, My Own Private Idaho, Longtime Companion and Making Love.

All you have to do is click on the picture above to enlarge it, then simply right click your mouse and select "Set as Background". (You can also save it to your computer and set it up from there if you prefer.) The size is 1024 x 768, but you can modify it if needed in your own photo-editing program.

Boys Will Be Boys: When Men Dance With Men on Film

This post is part of the Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon, now underway at FerdyOnFilms.com.

A man approaches a couple on a tightly-packed dance floor and asks to cut in; the lady agrees, but when she steps aside, the man joins her partner instead for a little man-on-man waltz action. Observing the situation, bandleader Al Jolson quips, "Boys will be boys!"

The scene is from the 1934 musical melodrama Wonder Bar (most likely you remember it from the seminal documentary on gay representation in film, The Celluloid Closet). But that was far from the first time two men danced together on the silver screen; in the famous Dickson experimental sound film from 1894 (which some scholars credit as the first ever motion picture with sound), two men unironically hold each other close as a violinist plays in the background.

And thus the image of -- and approach to -- men dancing together on film was (unintentionally) established with these two early examples, one comic, the other (pardon the pun) straightforward. And the boys have been doing it one way or the other ever since.

When one first thinks of men dancing with men in the movies, most likely the first thoughts are of such widescreen production numbers as those seen in West Side Story and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, wherein macho gang members and farm hands prove their manliness by way of elaborately choreographed ballets. On the flip side is the homoerotically charged "Y.M.C.A" dance routine in the camptastic Can't Stop the Music; the jocks on display here display their manhood in quite different ways than their predecessors, but the gist is still the same: "our testosterone levels are about to burst, so there is only one thing left to do ... gotta dance!"

Another instance of men dancing together is when they just want to entertain ... call them the "lets put on a show!" moments. Rooted in burlesque, it is no wonder that most of these tend toward the bawdy side, from drag queens (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) to strippers (The Full Monty), but if you want seriousness, then there is always the cat-walkers of Paris is Burning. They take their voguing very seriously.

Then of course, there is the instances of men not so much dancing with men as men dancing with men. Beginning in the 70's, out and out "gay films" became more common, and naturally, they often showed the guys getting their groove on (this being the 70's and all), whether in joyous group dances (The Boys in the Band) or popper-fueled bacchanals (Cruising). And even though disco died, the need to cut loose didn't, with similar scenes appearing in more recent gay-themed films, such as Edge of Seventeen and Trick.

But not all man on man dancing has to be on a crowded disco floor; more intimate, one-on-on pas de deux range from the sublimely comedic (Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot) to the bittersweet (Tom Hanks and Antonio Banderas in Philadelphia) to the achingly romantic (Glen Berry and Scott Neal in Beautiful Thing).

In closing, there is perhaps no better ode to the "men dancing with men" sub-sub-genre than Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall, the Oscar-winning short film whose title says it all; a delightfully droll comedy of manners ... and you can dance to it.

For more of the Invitation to Dance Movie Blogathon, visit FerdyOnFilms.com.