Abba The Movie (Blu-ray)

ABBA: The Movie

This is a semi-documentary about the famous Swedish pop group ABBA's 1977 week-long tour of Australia. The film has a very loose plot which is little more than a vehicle to link together the archive concert footage. It concerns the adventures of Ashley Wallace (Robert Hughes), a nave and incompetent disk jockey on Radio 2TW, who normally presents a through-the-night country and western-themed show of broadcasting only country music. In spite of this, he is sent by the station's boss (Bruce Barry) to get an in-depth interview ("Not an interview, a dialogue", demands his boss) with the group, whose fame and stature neither he nor Ashley have the first clue about, which is to be aired on the day ABBA leaves Australia at the end of their tour.

Needless to say, Ashley, who has never done an interview before, singularly fails, mainly because he has forgotten to pack his press card, although the fact that he is unable to buy a concert ticket doesn't help matters either. Armed with his trusty reel-to-reel tape recorder, Ashley is forced to follow the group all over Australia to try to get his interview with the group (which is the movie's running joke as he follows them around from place to place... and looking like he has no idea what he is doing).

Ashley first begins his persuit at ABBA's opening concert in Sydney, and then travelling, in order, to Perth, then to Adelaide, and Melbourne, experiencing repeated run-ins with the group's very protective bodyguard (Tom Oliver), as well as his increasingly exasperated boss.

Eventually, Ashley has an unbelievably lucky chance encounter with Stig Anderson (playing himself), the group's manager, who agrees to an interview. After attending a concert, Ashley sleeps in and misses the appointed interview time (after having a bizzare dream about him interacting with the group at a local park).

Just as Ashley is about to give up (by this time, he doesn't even care that his press card... which has also been traveling across Australia, continually forwarded by the postal service has finally arrived!), he steps into a hotel elevator and finds himself face-to-face with ABBA. They agree to give him an interview. The interview is not shown, but he thanks the group afterwards and leaves with his tape recorder to catch the first plane back to Sydney.

Ashley leaves Melbourne just in time to meet the deadline for the radio show to go out on-air. He puts together the final edit in the back of a taxi on the way back from the airport, as ABBA departs Australia for Europe. With only minutes to go, Ashley makes it back to the Sydney radio station where, having set the tape up on the studio's playback machine, he relaxes at his control desk to listen as the interview (which he worked so long and hard to obtain) is broadcast over the airwaves Down Under.

The final images are of the group's farewell concert in Melbourne and of them recording at their lake island residence back in Sweden.