Review of ABBA: The Movie (1977) by Michael C — 11 Nov 2007

â??â?¦this is not a documentary, it's an event. This is going to be world-wide.â?? So a radio station owner advises his DJ, who has been asked to interview a Swedish pop group about to tour the land down under, though he might as well have been preaching to the converted. Even before ABBA arrived in Sydney, Australia (and certainly by the release of this film) Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn, and Anni-Frid were fast becoming the single greatest musical phenomenon on the planet. By 1977, they had already compiled enough material to release their first Greatest Hits package. More was on the way (as were two divorces), but the bulk of early 1977 was spent on tour in Europe and then-with cameras in tow-Australia.

Donâ??t laugh: ABBA is cool; not â??wasâ?? cool, â??isâ??. They made great pop music, the kind which later inspires a Broadway musical (soon to be a film!) or leads no less a connoisseur than Bono to declare them, â??One of the best pop groups that ever was.â?? They still sell more than three thousand records daily worldwide. They didnâ??t break new ground but they arguably were one of the best in doing what dozens of imitators have tried: to breath life into rehashed formulas to the point where, more than thirty years on, they still sound fresh and still inspire listeners to rise from their bottoms and boogie down.

This is a great film to learn about the early ABBA, the ABBA you wonâ??t hear on either ABBA Gold or More ABBA Gold. This is ABBA before they thoroughly explored disco, when they still had generous doses of â??popâ?? in their veins. As a consequence not every song is immediately recognizable; that is even more reason to tune in.

Itâ??s a marketing piece plain and simple, but so was A Hard Dayâ??s Night, and like that film, director Lasse Hallstrom (later to helm a succession of brilliant art house films) recycles many of the running-jumping-standing still physical/visual gags of his predecessor (including the hyperactive â??Intermezzo #1â?? sequence). Itâ??s all good clean fun. Moreover, like A Hard Dayâ??s Night, the film succeeds at capturing a moment in time. Ashley (!) wanders about the Australian cities interviewing people on the street, who respond with frank opinionated commentaries on the group.

Onscreen, their popularity is gargantuan. It may appear stretched and staged but it wasnâ??t, ABBAmania really was that big. The fans did line the airport route in Melbourne for nineteen kilometers, did flock in numbers of eighty thousands to see the group in concert, and did buy enough singles to put an ABBA song in the number one spot six consecutive times. That they matched this popularity with a quality that for the most part avoided the traditional pop bell curve is further testament to the fact that all of this hyperbole was worth the effort.