When we think of Swedish super-group Abba on the big screen, we automatically call to mind the smash-hit movie Mamma Mia! (2008) and its 2018 sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. They in turn were inspired by the mega-successful stage musical Mamma Mia! (1999).
Almost eclipsed by these productions' immense, ongoing global success, however, is a much earlier, nowadays largely overlooked cinematic appearance by Abba, dating back to the late 1970s and very succinctly entitled Abba: The Movie. I've owned it on videocassette since the mid-1990s but without ever having viewed it; so to mark the quintessential quartet of popular music's (very) long-awaited recent renaissance, I decided on 14 November 2021 to finally watch this virtually forgotten film (especially in the USA, where it has rarely been screened on TV and never released in home video format) – which I did.
Directed and co-written (with Robert Caswell) by Lasse Hallström, with Abba's own manager Stig Anderson and Australian media mogul Reg Grundy as its producers, and released by Warner Bros in 1977, Abba: The Movie takes the form of a semi-documentary (or, to be more precise, a rockumentary concert film) that focuses upon Abba's massively successful 1977 Australian tour. Released at the same time as their fifth studio album 'Abba: The Album', it showcases many of their live concert performances Down Under, featuring hit after hit from their already vast catalogue of songs, including many from the new album, as well as earlier stalwarts such as 'Money, Money, Money', 'Fernando', 'Dancing Queen', 'Mamma Mia', 'S.O.S.', and 'Waterloo'.
Their very enjoyable concert performances are, in stark contrast, linked by a slender, increasingly tedious episodic storyline featuring imho a no less tedious fictional DJ's ever more persistent yet unremittingly dull attempts to secure an interview with the band for his radio show before they depart Australia. During the course of the movie, this charisma-free character stalks them doggedly from one major city to another, including Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne.
Worthy of note is that this film marked the movie debut of none other than famous Australian martial artist Richard Norton, who played a fitness trainer and bodyguard to Abba, but did not receive an on-screen credit for his role. Nevertheless, it evidently helped to provide him with an effective big-screen launch pad, as he would go on to star in many major Hong Kong action flicks as well as becoming a stuntman and martial arts instructor.
Apart from a sumptuous soft-focus dream scene, accompanied by the melodious strains of 'The Name of the Game' (a #1 single in the UK, and taken from 'Abba: The Album'), Abba: The Movie is very low-key compared to the spectacular production values of the two much later movies and (especially) the stage musical. Nevertheless, Abba fans adored it back in the day, capturing and immortalising as it did (and still does) the formidable foursome while they were still young and at the pinnacle of their success, without an avatar anywhere in sight!
If you'd like to view an official USA trailer for Abba: The Movie on YouTube, please click here; and if you are fluent in French, you can watch a French-dubbed version of the entire movie free of charge on YouTube here.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment