Movie soundtracks have featured ABBA music for decades

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With the Friday opening of the movie version of the musical "Mamma Mia!," ABBA once again takes center stage in a movie.Here's a look at some other films in which the music of the '70s and '80s Swedish supergroup played a prominent role."Just the Way You Are" (1984): The title may be taken from a Billy Joel song, but Kristy McNichol, who plays a flute player with a bum leg, gets on the dance floor and boogies to a medley of other songs, including ABBA's "Voulez-Vous.""Muriel's Wedding" (1994): Toni Collette stars as the nuptials-obsessed title character in this Australian crowd-pleaser, and ABBA is everywhere in this movie."The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994): Another Australian classic, this road comedy stars Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving and Terence Stamp as two drag queens and a transvestite who make their way to a cabaret gig in the desert in a bus called Priscilla. Pearce and Weaving lip-synch to "Mamma Mia.""Summer of Sam" (1999): Spike Lee's gritty look at life in New York City in 1977, when the city was paralyzed by the fear of the serial killer known as the Son of Sam and an unrelenting heat wave, features two numbers in its soundtrack from ABBA: "Fernando" and "Dancing Queen.""Johnny English" (2003): Rowan Atkinson plays an inept spy who is called on to save the world because all the other agents have been killed. At one point, we hear ABBA's "Does Your Mother Know.""I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" (2007): Two straight guys pretend to be gay and get married in this comedy starring Kevin James and Adam Sandler. Among the many songs in the soundtrack is "Dancing Queen.""Get Smart" (2008): The movie that opened last month starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway as the secret agents also features "Dancing Queen."(E-mail Leba Hertz at lhertz(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)