Mamma Mia! Is a Warmed-Over, Sanitized Retread of Priscilla

On advice from a friend, I watched Mamma Mia. Ugh. It was a tired, warmed-over, sanitized retread of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Not only did I not enjoy it, I now ridicule this particular friend's taste in movies. As a result, I rented Priscilla, one of my favorite movies and one that has stayed enjoyable and relevant even 18 years after it was released.

I think nearly everyone secretly loves ABBA. They created cheery pop-disco that never challenged anyone. The music is danceable, and the high camp of their image is celebrated by anyone who loves this sort of thing, and that includes people whose artistic sensibility would normally be deterred by the fact that ABBA did nothing of particular interest to advance music.On their EP Abba-esque, the band Erasure celebrated ABBA's music but also gave it some depth; the heartfelt "SOS" is amazing. (Funnily, the ABBA cover band Bjorn Again released a response record called Erasure-ish, which covered Erasure songs in ABBA style.)

If you haven't see Priscilla, you're missing out on a cinematic gem. The movie revolves around a man and his two best friends who venture out into the Australian Outback on a pretense, but really for a reunion between a boy and his father. Mamma Mia switches genders for characters (it's a woman and her three best friends, and a daughter rather than a son) and seems to follow the traditional MO of comedy films which goes back to Shakespeare and beyond, with a bit of mystery that's not really that interesting becoming of great importance as white lies become blown out of proportion; everything is revealed and resolved in the end, probably with couples old and new getting together. Hurray. Yawn.

I have to say "seems" because I turned Mamma Mia off after about thirty minutes. Other than showing that Meryl Streep in her late fifties is (frankly) just as hot as Amanda Seigfried, I just couldn't be brought to care. The characters were wooden, and the covers of ABBA songs were tired.

OK, so back to Priscilla (I'm not going to hold back on "spoilers" because this isn't some M. Night Shyamalan one-trick pony). Tick (Hugo Weaving) is a professional drag queen living in Sidney who gets a call out of the blue from his wife, whom he hasn't seen in six years; she asks him to come to her resort in Alice Spring to perform for a few weeks. Tick invites his two closest friends, fellow drag queen Adam (Guy Pearce, whose stage name is Felicia Jollygoodfellow) and Bernadette (Terence Stamp), an m-to-f transexualformer and drag queen who has just lost her young husband.

The "girls" have costumes and scenery to bring for their show, and Adam buys a used tour bus for the trip, naming it Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. (Alice Springs is a tourist town near the center of Australia, much smaller and a bit more adventurous than, say, Las Vegas.) The trip involves several days of travel, which get extended by a breakdown (the timeline is clearly exaggerated, as you could get to Alice in about a day and a half or two days, depending on whether you stopped).

The film is split between the explorations of small-town outback Australia and three men discussing their lives. There are several homophobic incidents, but the film isn't preachy; most of the time in the towns is played for laughs. The talks on and off the bus are much more intense, mixing drama and the general complexity of life. The men reveal secrets about their past as they forge stronger friendships in an unfamiliar world.

The music adds a dimension of fun, and the songs are originals, since the "girls" all lip-sync. Add in ridiculous costumes, lurid makeup, and a bizarre giant shoe, and the music bits are hilarious and definite sing-alongs (especially in theaters; if you ever get a chance to see this in the theater, expect to see a Rocky-Horror-esque show). Don't expect too much ABBA.