Kip Reviews Summer Cinema, Vol. II: Mamma Mia!

Kip says: "I'm a man's man and I like "guy movies." There aren't enough of them these days but this summer has brought us two very fine ones. The first, of course, was the Sex and the City movie, which explored the lives and loves of four horny old women and taught us many things (for instance, I had no idea that women of that age even had sex at all!). And in theaters now is another: Mamma Mia. Now I realize that I've made disparaging comments about musicals in the past, calling them a "gay art" (street gangs just don't sing and dance...I'm sorry!). But this one, a story about a young girl looking for her real father, centered around the complex music of ABBA, made me change my mind. I'll tell you why. First and foremost, there's the presence of one Pierce Brosnan, in my opinion the finest of the Bonds (and let us not forget his role as Remington Steele). If it's okay for Pierce Brosnan to sing and dance, then it's okay for me to sing and dance. Simple as that. And then of course there's the music. ABBA is often misunderstood as being "sweet" or "simplistic," but look at the lyrics of a song like "Dancing Queen": "You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen/ Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine/ You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life/See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen." Here the songwriters Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson rework the usually "innoocent" image of the young queen into a rather raunchy celebration of teenage sexuality: I'm fairly certain that "dig in the dancing queen" means that the speaker wants to "enter" her (sexually, I mean). This is a powerful film and you'll notice that it did reasonably well at the box-office in its first weekend despite the stiff competition of the new Batman flick. I imagine that most of Batman's audience consists of young women who want to look at pretty-boy Christian Bale in his Batsuit, while the real men of the world are in the auditorium next door, having the time of their lives. And let me conclude with a final piece of advice to guys. There's a fellow named Colin Firth in this film who has apparently appeared in a lot of romantic-comedies (which I have not seen, as I generally dislike that "chick-flick" shit). But if you take a date to Mamma Mia and afterwards praise the acting ability of this Firth, it just might earn you a blowjob, possibly even during the car ride home."

Below, Kip is pictured reading Bright Lights Dark Shadows: The Real Story of ABBA by Carl Palm.

[deleted by request of Kip, who suddenly fears his new employers might perform a magical "image search!"]