ABBA: The Movie

ABBA's 1977 Australian tour. The group plays Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, and the film wraps the concert footage in a fictional story. Lasse Hallström directed. By then he had made most of ABBA's music videos. He described how the script came about: it was conceived on the plane on the way to Australia and developed during production. The fictional line belongs to a radio DJ. Ashley Wallace is told to get an interview before the group leaves the country, and runs across Australia with his tape recorder, forgetting his press pass and failing to find a concert ticket. The peak is a missed appointment. Ashley oversleeps and misses the meeting arranged with the manager Stig Anderson, then runs into ABBA in a lift and gets his interview there. It was a commercial success, taking around 5.3 million Swedish kronor. Critics called it slick, competent and entertaining even for the non-convert, and some compared it to A Hard Day's Night. Who it is for: people who listen to ABBA and viewers curious about seventies concert films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a documentary. The frame is entirely invented and the film makes no claim to tell you anything real about the group.