Do you want a review? Here it is: go see it. There.

Back to the Elsewhere, the ramblings of a would-be author seeing fiction's potential everywhere.

What pleased me most about the film was the music. Duh, that's the whole point: take a bunch of Abba songs, set them to plot. No, it's more than that. It's the songs themselves.

I don't much remember them, nor much of the Seventies. ("If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there" may also apply to the Seventies, too.) I have a different excuse - I wasn't out of grade school yet.

When I thought of Abba before, I just tossed them in the Lycra and polyester Disco-wear bin. Good rhythm, bouncy beat, upbeat voices, but otherwise, ear-candy.

Listening to the songs in a dramatic context, as part of a story gave me opportunity to appreciate the play in language, the breadth of narrative in some of those songs. In other words, they weren't just ear-candy. Some of them had a good deal of emotional heft.

In doing some surface research for this blog (in other words, reading the Wikipedia entry above), I learned that the band had a 'before' and an 'after' phase. It wasn't said outright, but the 'before' phase seems to be the empty ditties, and the 'after' phase "produced more thoughtful lyrics with different compositions."

At any rate, it was a pleasant surprise to discover the wordsmithing. Oh, and the plot, songs, dance, dialogue and sets were all very well done, too. Definitely worth going to see, in a writerly frame of mind or otherwise.