::A Geek in Korea::

When my wife and I first got an mp3 player for her, the one thing she wanted to transfer over was her copy of the soundtrack to “Mamma Mia“. She loved ABBA and wanted to listen to the English songs over and over. I wasn’t a fan of ABBA, save for Dancing Queen and a few other songs you’d hear in the singing room, but it wasn’t like I was going to have to hear the music on her mp3 player, so why not? It’s one of the few pieces of English music she listens to on a regular basis.

Later, while we were in London, we had a chance to see Mamma Mia on the West End. It was my first real musical as an adult, and my parents paid for the tickets to see the show as a birthday present for her. It was ridiculously expensive to see the show in the heart of London, and we wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.

It’s one of our best memories of the trip to Europe we took together too. The whole family loved the show, and we had a great time in the theater. She was bounding with smiles and energy after she saw the musical. The enthusiasm was contagious. I actually liked a lot more of the songs than I realized, and transfered her soundtrack to MY mp3 player to listen to as well. It just makes me smile.

When we saw the trailer for Mamma Mia the movie, I was actually more excited to see it than she was. I have no shame in saying that. I wanted to see the movie to relive the memory of the musical because it was so great. She didn’t want to see it because she thought it wouldn’t be as good as the musical. I insisted we see the movie no matter what she wanted. We found time this weekend to see the movie.

The story is basically unchanged. There were small differences between the musical and the movie, but it was similar enough that you get the experience if you watch the movie. It wasn’t as intimate, and some of the singing wasn’t nearly as good. (Pierce Brosnan, looking at you.)

The most disappointing transistion from musical to film was the chorus line of dancers in swimming flippers during “Lay All Your Love On Me”. In this movie, the flipper scene was a good :20 seconds long, but in the musical it was a hilarious scene, and probably my favorite part of the entire musical.

We both were sitting in the theater nitpicking some of the differences. “This wasn’t in the musical…Oh, he can’t sing well…etc.” Despite this, we both had a good time, and I spent most of the time in the theater smiling. It’s like I’ve heard in reviews. It just leaves everyone smiling. It’s so rare that a movie would put me in a good mood like this one did. I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn’t seen the musical first though.

My wife got to see the story with Korean subtitles for the first time. She was a bit shocked by the sexual underpinnings of basically EVERY song in the entire feature. She knew the songs, and could sing along, but didn’t really put together what the songs really were implying. She was surprised that she had been missing all of that subtext when she watched the musical. “No, it was all there,” I told her.

I think it’s good she got to see the whole story with subtitles and everything. I enjoyed sitting through the whole thing again with her, and we walked home and talked about our trip to London, the musical, and the movie. It was a good evening.