ABBA Dabba Do!

We laughed, we cried, we sang along. Add the Hannas to the growing list of “Mamma Mia” fans.

I wasn’t that keen on going. I’ve never owned an ABBA album. I don’t automatically start swaying when “Dancing Queen” comes on the radio. And I sometimes have trouble keeping a straight face when characters burst into song in the middle of a conversation.

I never miss a Meryl Streep movie, however–even the dreadful one she did with Goldie Hawn where her head twists around 180 degrees.

Meryl and I have a lot in common. She is smart, talented, and beautiful. I am all three of those when I am dreaming that I will turn into Meryl Streep when I grow up.

My idol worship began when I saw “Kramer vs. Kramer,” still the biggest tear-jerker of all time, except for her next film, “Sophie’s Choice.” Maybe it was the connection I felt to her characters as a mother.

When I was a young mother back in Indiana, I knew Meryl Streep’s sister-in-law, Sherry Gummer. Sherry was married to the brother of Don Gummer, Meryl’s sculptor husband. Once, Sherry showed me a picture of Meryl with her new baby, Mary Willa (nicknamed “Mamie”). The snapshot was taken right after Meryl had given birth, and she was, as you might expect, disheveled but still perfectly gorgeous. I kept hoping to run into her during one of their visits to the Gummer hometown, but, alas, it never happened.

But enough about my dubious connection to Hollywood.

Keeper and I were in the mood for a little mindless entertainment last Saturday, so we headed for the 4:30 showing of “Mamma Mia.” For the next hour and 48 minutes, we sat entranced, stupid grins on our faces.

The story itself is barebones. Donna (Meryl) is the former lead singer of the girl group Donne and the Dynamos. She runs a hotel on a Greek island, where she has raised her daughter by herself. The daughter is getting married and longs to know the identity of her father. She reads her mother’s diary and discovers three likely candidates. She secretly invites them all to the wedding. Improbably, they all drop what they’re doing and travel to this remote island.

Myriad misunderstandings ensue.

In true movie musical fashion, the high points are punctuated by the lead actors singing their feelings. As she demonstrated in “A Prairie Home Companion,” Streep has the chops to pull this off. Her version of “The Winner Takes it All” is a showstopper. (To be fair, maybe it’s the spectacular setting.) Her love interest, played by Pierce Brosnan as one of the “three Dads,” should have opted for lip synching.

The story is not the point of the movie. Neither is the quality of the individual voices. The movie is about celebration. It celebrates beauty, love, friendship, music, and life itself.

There is a lot of dancing, some of it up and down stairs. For a broad of 60, Streep is remarkably agile. It is reassuring to us Baby Boomers to see our contemporaries rocking out, as Donna and the Dynamos do in the movie encore.

I know this sounds hokey. I’m not an easy sell, believe me. Ask Keeper. I can sit dry-eyed through any sappy fare that the Lifetime channel has to offer. But this movie was Joy itself. We wanted it to never end. Three days later, I’m still in a good mood.

Give it a try. You don’t have to sing along. In fact, if you sing like Pierce Brosnan, I recommend that you don’t.

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