!

Jesus Christ, could there be a more irritating movie than Mama Mia! 

Everybody! Was! Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

I don't know exactly what went wrong. Fans of the movie guaranteed satisfaction, if not mild entertainment, to those who enjoy Abba's music.  While I do not consider myself a fan of their music, I do find them tolerable bordering on likable, and yet I got neither satisfaction nor mild entertainment. In fact, the key takeaway of the movie for me was grating annoyance. Could it be that the pedestal I built for IKEA had me pegging other Swedish-related products on a stratosphere beyond the reach of reasonable expectations? No, that would be silly. 

Besides, I already mentioned that I am not a fan of Abba.

But while the music did nothing against my sensibilities, the over-the-top, hyper-sensationalized histrionics jarred me to my core. As I watched Meryl Streep gyrate her geriatric hips in front of the camera with what I can only assume to be a medically-induced exuberance, I kept asking myself: Why? why? why?

Why is someone of her acting calibre debasing herself, er, happily like this? Why did my auntie's friends enthusiastically recommended this movie? And why in God's name did it become the best-selling dvd in the UK for 2008? 

Of course it has to be over-the-top, you say. It's a musical. It can't merely be larger-than-life--it has to be Adam Lambert excess. 

It would be unreasonable to expect for each and every film to live up to what I deemed to be its quintessential representative in that particular genre. But I can't help but wonder how less irritating Mama Mia! could have been had it been Baz Luhrmann's pet.

God, get back to me on this.