Let's get this out of the way upfront: Mamma Mia! is a lock to be listed as one of my ten worst films of the year when I get around to compiling my list. When I first saw it in the theater, I felt like I was being assaulted, my brain literally melting around my ears in oozy puddles of gelatinous mush thanks to the continuous onslaught of forced joviality pummeling me for a full 109-minutes.

For me to hate this thing as much as I did is kind of a personal surprise. I am a fan of musicals. I think both The Band Wagon and Singing in the Rain are two of the greatest Hollywood pictures ever made. I watch The Sound of Music religiously each New Year. I thrill to the glories of Cabaret every time I view it. I find both Moulin Rouge and Chicago to be modern classics of the genre. Heck, I even got a kick out last summer's hit Hairspray.

I tend to be a pushover when I find something inside a movie to celebrate; usually giving those projects a slightly disgruntled pass. Not a chance in this case. What does it matter if Christine Baranski can belt out a May-December showtune when the musical she's doing it in has already battered the viewer into a state of catatonic unconsciousness? Who cares if former Mean Girls weathergirl and "Big Love" Amanda Seyfried possess both charm and poise (and can also boast a rather sweetly lilting soprano) when the movie itself makes you want to run out into the streets and hopefully get hit by a semi truck? This is a film that slaps you senseless, the Road Runner-like pace so exhausting I wanted to call it quits right from the get-go.

Now that I've gotten all of that out of my system, let me just say that fans of Mamma Mia! (and, considering this just became Britain's highest grossing motion picture and was also a massive success here, there must be a lot of them) will find plenty to adore about Universal's Blu-ray release of the film. This thing is hugely impressive, not only on a technical side, but on the special features one as well.

What's truly most shocking is that the majority of the extras are actually kind of wonderful, almost making me wonder why I disliked it so much on that first viewing. Featurettes on the movie's production, on teaching the cast to sing, on how much effort it took to bring the musical numbers to life, even the deleted scene for "The Name of the Game," go a long way to almost convincing me to change my mind.

Helping even more is the ability to watch all of the songs as sing-along musical numbers separate from the film itself. On their own, many of these, most notably "I Have a Dream," "Honey, Honey," "Lay All Your Love On Me" and "Slipping Through My Fingers," are actually quite nice to watch. They are surprisingly pleasant and easy to hum along with, making me suddenly realize how profound and sometimes even beautiful some of the songs by 1970's disco super group ABBA really were.

It was only when I tried to watch the film in its entirety that I came to my senses and was reminded why this musical as a whole just does not work. Any project that can take a dynamic virtuoso talent like Meryl Streep and make her look both uncomfortable and embarrassed in the span of a nanosecond has got major problems. One that does the same thing to fellow thespians like Pierce Brosnan (who should never, and I mean never, be allowed to sing ever again), Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Stellan Skarsgård and the aforementioned Baranski should be immediately flushed down the toilet.

How this worked in the theater I cannot say (and considering it's been playing for nearly a decade with no signs of stopping I can only assume it plays quite well) but as a movie musical it works about as well as pouring sulfuric acid on a bug bite. The movie is a constant state of overkill murderously bashing all viewers foolhardy enough to try and enjoy it, director Phyllida Lloyd making as poor a transition from stage to screen as any I have ever seen.

That doesn't stop her from waxing amazingly poetic in her rather horrific audio commentary. The whole thing consists of her saying how beautiful certain shots are, how amazing some of the camera moves were, how great a singers the men proved to be, how intelligent the script is and how the whole thing is grounded in such solid reality it shouldn't even be considered a comedic romantic fantasy.

She's surprisingly wrong on all counts, even die hard lovers of the film not probably going to be able to defend many of her more outlandish statements. While I fully believe one girl's poison can be another's champagne, listening to her talking here I kind of believe that both the show's and the movie's massive success has gone more than a little but to the director's head. She's taken it to a plain that's positively unheard of, and by the time the film's over and her commentary has concluded you'd almost think she were talking about Citizen Kane and not some minor, sure to be forgotten over-energetic Hollywood musical.

As for the Blu-ray exclusive extras, if you go online you can record your own personal audio or text commentary and send it to your friends, a relatively cool feature I was not remotely technically proficient enough with to actually figure out. You can also chat with them as if you're having a giggly slumber party while the film simultaneously plays for the lot of you. The disc also offers more of Universal's fantastic U-Control features, taking you behind the history of each of the ABBA songs or giving you a fairly intriguing picture-in-picture all while watching the movie. The rest of the standard-def extras include some truly horrible deleted scenes, a couple of slightly funny outtakes, the "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" music video and the deleted cameo by ABBA band member Björn Ulvaues.

I really don't know what else to say. I still hate Mamma Mia! and firmly believe it is one of the very worst films I've seen this year. That said, this Blu-ray disc is highly impressive, the special features, the almost miraculous sound quality and the startlingly clear hi-def transfer certainly worthy of appreciation. Fans will definitely want to spend the extra dough and grab it up. Everyone else, my suggestion is to stay as far away from the film as possible because watching it very well might end up hurting you.