1,669,084 songs stuck in your head

That is the number of copies that the DVD for Mamma Mia: The Movie sold on its first day.  The Guardian’s film critic, Peter Bradshaw, is none too pleased.

All I can say is: grrrrrrrrrrrr. I am more determined than ever to lead the extremist Male Grump Backlash against Mamma Mia!. As everyone explodes joyfully and life-affirmingly out of the cinema, dancing and singing and hugging, I am the bloke grimacing and growling in the foyer and clutching my box-set of The Wire: Complete First Season…

I love Abba as much as anyone else, but Mamma Mia: The Movie is a thin, pallid, pathetic, gutless, infantilised film – far, far, far inferior to High School Musical 3, which now looks like Citizen Kane in comparison.

For someone who admits to loving Abba, High School Musical 3, and Sex in the City: The Movie, Bradshaw’s credentials are solid.  I don’t particularly love Abba, am skeptical about the latter two, and only saw the Broadway version of Mamma Mia.  It was entertaining enough, except for the annoying tendency of Abba songs to get stuck in your head forever.

Seriously, though, even if one does not except Bradshaw’s withering criticism (“the characters…are unreal, castrated, hysterectomised robots” in “this headache-inducing film”), it seems a bit hard to make the claim that this Abba-tacular is a critically acclaimed film.  It seems pretty much critically derided — but that shouldn’t stop folks from enjoying it, buying a million copies, and getting Abba songs stuck in their head for weeks on end.

(image from flickr user Rafa from Brazil under a Creative Commons license)