Mama Mia!

A few weeks ago I was feeling blue and bored and it was a million degrees and the obvious solution was to take myself off to the movie theater. There I would be not bored, chilled like a popsicle possibly very cheered up. Opening that day were The Dark Knight and Mama Mia! Yeah, that's not even a toss-up I hate those stupid Batman/Spiderman/Fantastic Four movies. I have never seen Mama Mia! as a musical and I don't know ABBA, but it looked fun and seemed perfect.

It was. It was not good. It was fun. See, there's a difference.

The acting was so-so, the singing also mostly so-so, but the spirit was fun. And that ABBA music, that shit is unrelentingly upbeat- you can not be in the least bit sad with that music around. You can be silly and dramatic but only in the most comical and over-the-top way not genuinely sad.

The music and the story were fun. But for me, the women in the movie were the real focus, their relationships with each other made the movie sparkle. Having Julie Waters and Christine Baranski egging on Meryl, dragging her kicking and screaming into having fun and letting go, those are my kind of friends. I have friends like that, they're the ones who stop by with a pint of ice cream or a bottle of wine and let you whine and complain about your latest woes. Then somehow you are hysterical with laughter, all the mundane drops away and you just enjoy the moment.

Celebrating those friendships. The ones that start out when you're a kid, or a drunk college student or just because you work in the same office but that stick, grow, stay and get better over time, that seemed to be the whole point of this movie. Or if not the point, than the soul of this movie. What our friends, and specifically, what our girlfriends do for us is the key. They know the worst, bring out the best, let us be silly, share our burdens and sometimes dance around to ABBA in funny outfits.

Amen, sisters, amen.

The photo is from the LA Times.