Nostalgia places heart over head and overrides all sense of logic, sanity and practicality. So when I go and watch Mamma Mia!, I get gushy and sentimental as I reminisce growing up on the music of ABBA. I recall having ABBA posters on the walls of my room and I remember having seen ABBA: The Movie twice. So I sit back and enjoy watching Meryl Streep have the time of her life as she whoops it up on a stunningly beautiful Greek Island singing Money Money Money.
What I fail to notice is the obviously cheesy plot taken from the old Gina Lollobrigida movie Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell (1968). I overlook Pierce Brosnan’s woeful singing capability, which should otherwise make me cringe. I buy the most absurd situations and corny contrivances in the campy story just so that the ABBA songs can be fitted in. I smile and go along with the silly end titles with the lead cast in ‘Waterloo outfits.’ I come out of the theatre grinning from ear-to-ear and once I reach home, I immediately put on my ABBA: Gold CD. And now when I visit UK next, I intend to catch up on the stage play that inspired the film.
Maybe those happy days don’t seem so hard to find after all!
Nostalgia is directly proportional to time (and age). We find ourselves reflecting a lot more on the past as we grow older I guess. The funny thing is that when we actually experienced some of the things we fondly remember, they didn’t seem a big deal and often were downright bad experiences at that time!
Actually Bulbul, Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell was re-made into a rather ghastly Hindi film called Mother (1999) by Saawan Kumar Tak starring Rekha.
Mamma Mia! was pure corn but you can’t help but get into the sense of fun it exudes and as I said, the nostalgia of growing up in the 1970s and reliving the ABBA music makes it perfect! 🙂
One of the ABBA guys was a part of the stage play production. I thought Mamma Mia was so much like a good hindi movie.
@Niv: Undertsand your point totally. And why just ABBA, those were the days of Boney M too, remember? Night Flight to Venus, Brown Girl in the Ring, Rasputin, By the Rivers of Babylon… 🙂
In talking about Nostalgia, you could NOT have picked a better example than Mamma mia!! forget the number of times I stayed up late watching it over & over relishing each Abba tune!, this was something to be experienced only in the company of others that understood, else best to go thru it alone!