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IT is, of course, possible to disagree with some of the ingredients that make up the hit film Mamma Mia!
The fact that much of the acting is creakier than a barn door. That when straining for the high notes, the male lead, Pierce Brosnan, sounds like a bullfrog in a blender. That the mooning young lovers are not for the lactose intolerant, being cheesier than a night spent in a fondue factory.
But these would be passing quibbles. Because what you can't possibly disagree with is the fun of the film - it has been described as the ultimate feelgood movie - and the truly phenomenal figures.
In Bahrain, movie-goers and staff have been photographed dancing in the aisles during screenings. Mamma Mia! has taken $555 million worldwide at the box office to date, becoming the most successful musical film in history, trouncing West Side Story, Cabaret and Grease.
When released on DVD, it quickly became the fastest-selling film in British history, for example, shifting 1,669,084 copies on its first day. It now only needs to inch past Titanic to become the highest-grossing film ever - it is already the highest-grossing British film of all time, beating the Harry Potter films hands down.
And it can be praised, or blamed, for a new wave of irony-free love for the band Abba, whose hits form the basis of the story.
Over the summer, the Abba greatest hits compilation, Gold, which was first released in 1992, became the oldest album ever to reach the top of the charts.
Essentially then, the film has become an all-singing, all-dancing juggernaut which must come as a surprise to the film critics - many of them male - who described it as 'dull', and 'grotesque' when it came out in July.
What they didn't understand, it seems, was how appealing the film would be to that much-neglected female audience who, in the words of the film's producer, Judy Craymer, are 'north-of-middle-age'.
With its warmth, sauce and humour, the story of Donna Sheridan - a middle-aged mother living on a Greek island, ambushed at her daughter's wedding by the three men who could potentially be the girl's father - has brought women flooding through cinema doors.
Craymer knew how successful the film could be, because it was she who first conceived of building a show around Abba's greatest hits almost a quarter of a century ago.
She finally brought Mamma Mia! to the stage in 1999 with the help of writer Catherine Johnson and director Phyllida Lloyd and they all watched as its worldwide gross climbed to an incredible £1.3 billion, on the back of wildly enthusiastic repeat audiences.
The same trio of women performed the same trick with the film, Mamma Mia! becoming one of those incredibly rare releases that people see again and again - both the original, and the subtitled 'singalong' version that has recently been packing them in.
One of the film's stars, Colin Firth, has said that its secret is that it is a 'virtual holiday', which is true - but it also represents female friendship, hope over experience, love over bitterness, the wonder of spandex, the joy of a rousing chorus, the beauty of a seascape, and the stunning power of The Winner Takes it All being sung by Streep, a 14-time Oscar nominee, to Brosnan, a former James Bond, on the edge of a Greek hillside at dusk. What more is there to say? It's got dancing queens; it's got super troupers. It's got it all.
