Embrace Your Inner Bjorn.

We rented "Mamma Mia" this past weekend, and I have to be honest: it really wasn't horrible. The reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are mixed, and for good reason. It is one of those flicks where you can see the (reasonable) arguments both for and against it.

Let's start with the plot: not exactly A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), is a twenty-something young woman, with a wedding coming up. Donna (Meryl Streep) is her mother, and the proprietor of a Greek Mediterranean money pit of a hotel. The story revolves around Sophie's father; namely, she never knew her father growing up, and Donna isn't exactly sure who the father was. By sneaking a peek at Donna's diary, Sophie has narrowed down the candidates to three, and she has tracked all three down and invited them to her wedding. It's a comedy! It's a drama! It's a love story! (The hotel is purported to be build somewhere near the mythical Aphrodite's fountain.)

In case you've been living under a rock, though, the major contrivance of this movie is that it is adapted from a Broadway musical based on the music of ABBA. And this is the font from which my original trepidation sprang (like the aforementioned Aphrodite's fountain...metaphors are so cool!): Meryl Streep crooning the songs of ABBA. How could any self-respecting man "want" to see this movie and keep his testosterone intact? The mere concept of this movie was, at its very core, emasculating, and thereby intimidating.

But I have been the main proponent of the following theory for some time, and I think it is what ultimately raises this movie to enjoyability: everyone loves ABBA. Even if you don't think you do, your love of ABBA is like some repressed memory. Some day you will be in a crowd of people, maybe waiting for your favorite band to take the stage, and the opening bars of "Does Your Mother Know" will come over the PA quite loud. The synthesizers will pulse; the cheesy guitar riff will ring, and you will find yourself with a dilemma on your hands: do you allow yourself to groove? If you are honest with yourself, you will obey your body and not your mind. You will bite your lip. Your shoulders will start to undulate. Even if you are not a dancer, you will start to re-create the moves of Tony Manero (that's John Travolta to the under 40 set) in Saturday Night Fever, but more wholesomely. And by the time you are bumping into the people next to you, dancing and jiving and singing along gleefully with the ESL-inflected refrain "Well I could dance with you honey/If you think it's funny/Does your mother know that you're out?", you will have embraced your inner Bjorn. It's okay. We all have an inner Bjorn.

Anyway, I digress. But that's all I really feel like I needed to say about "Mamma Mia". The cast is fun: Streep and Seyfried are joined by Pierce Brosnan (sings about as well as you might expect Remington Steele to sing), and Colin Firth. Christine Baranski and Julie Walters take turns stealing the show as Donna's friends Tanya and Rosie. Bottom line? The whole movie plays like the cast had a great time making it. That is worth the cheap rental in and of itself. Is it Streep's weightiest role, or her best acting job? Not by a long shot. Is it one of her more enjoyable performances? You bet.

Do I feel any less of a man for enjoying this movie? Let me answer that with another question: Do Benny and Bjorn look any less manly with their white polyester jumpsuits? On second thought, I'd prefer not to answer that.