Too much of everything

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

Fortunately I caught on to the moronic plot early on and was able to fast forward through those connecting scenes. Actually I fast forwarded through most of the songs except for a half dozen of their best tunes. The photography was mediocre. It was no Woodstock. The best part was how the group came across as sincere, dedicated likeable performers.

hey, i am going to be 60 still jiving listening to ABBA, which i do very often...those were the days...i happened to live during the GODS days...i was one of those luckiest guys to get a gift of ABBA LP signed (autographed) by them....from a captain of a Hungarian ship....he is my angel....enjoy ABBA for ever as there won't be another....i watched ABBA the movie 53 times cutting college classes...of course failed in many subjects....but it happens in life...part of life...no regrets....i am still going steady in life...building enterprises...creative and innovative and constructive and productive...all because of music that i love and ABBA that i love...ABBA - The GODS !!!

I am probably the only heterosexual British male of my generation who likes ABBA, or at least who likes them in a straightforward way and not in an ironic, postmodernist spirit of "I know they're naff, but then naff is the new cool!", although I have to confess that in my teenage years, which coincided with their heyday in the seventies, my interest was aroused as much by the good looks of the group's two female members as by their music. So when a film called "ABBA: The Movie" came on British TV recently (as part of Channel 5's "ABBA Night") I just had to watch it.Films made to cash in on the success of pop groups rarely if ever make for great cinema."Spice World" was probably a horrible embarrassment even to the most ardent fan of the Spice Girls (and even more so to the group themselves). The various Beatles films have been praised for their visual style and occasional wit, although I suspect that they will prove a closed book to anyone who is not interested in the Beatles' music. The same applies to "ABBA: The Movie". It deals with ABBA's tour of Australia (a country in which they always enjoyed great popularity) in 1977. It is not, however, a straight documentary, although it probably should have been. Scenes of the band playing concerts in various Australian cities are combined with a feeble plot line about a radio DJ trying to get an interview with them, about which the less said the better. What any ABBA fan will want to watch it for is the music. Anyone who is not an ABBA fan will probably not want to watch it at all.Even ABBA fans may be surprised by some of the music on offer here. Of course, when the film came out the group still had several years of stardom ahead of them and some of what we now think of as their greatest hits, such as "Chiquitita" and "The Winner Takes It All", were still to be written. Even so, the selection of songs may strike some as being slightly eccentric. We get to hear some more obscure offerings such as "When I Kissed the Teacher", "Tiger", the banal "Rock Me" and the shrill and strident "I'm a Marionette", these last two both qualifying for a place on any compilation album of ABBA's greatest misses, but there is no "Knowing Me, Knowing You", "Take A Chance On Me" or "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do I Do", all of which had been written by 1977.Nevertheless, we do get to hear most of ABBA's other great songs from the first half of their career- "Waterloo", "Fernando", "Mamma Mia", "Thank you for the Music", and a number of others. And, more importantly, we get to hear them performed in the original versions, not (as they were in the film version of "Mamma Mia") murdered by the likes of Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, whose ability to kill a song stone dead proves that he is just as deadly an assassin as his best-known character. And for those whose interest in the group is not purely musical I can report that both Agnetha and Frida were at the height of their beauty in 1977 and both spend much of the film wearing their trademark scanty costumes. 6/10

While there may have been the 1977 issue of Abba The Album, one would speculate on what's Abba The Movie all about? The fabulous Swedish four may have had acclaimed success with a cluster of hits to their names but at what cost did it have on their personal lives? The Movie is actually based on the accounts of Abba's Australian tour and even so the concert scenes are excellent for its quite rare to see them performing live and it should be noted that they barely travelled well. The rest of the movie film contains the actual movie footages and interestingly enough, features a then unknown Tom Oliver of Neighbours fame. In the whole, the film is quite good and acceptable for its time and I like the typical seventies scenes of Australia but as times change, what impact does it have more than thirty years later is that it has become terribly dated and sometimes made me cringe a bit and as the saying goes could have been a current affairs programme. 9/10 for the concerts - 6/10 for the movie.