Doogie Belts It and James Bond Does His Best to Kill the Disco

ABBA may be timeless, but Dr. Horrible steals the show this weekend.

We packed a theater for Mamma Mia! last night, and while the film has it's highlights (Christine Baranski steals the film at one point), there's one glaring flat note in the guise of a former James Bond. Pierce Brosnan can't hold a tune for his life, and drags down the Aegean ABBA romp hard-core. Everyone else, Meryl Streep-included, is toe-tapping serviceable, if not completely memorable.

There were still plenty of cheesy ABBA-tastic numbers to leave me grinning at the end, but this is no classic movie musical. It's disposable popcorn fluff, semi-choreographed on a Greek pseudo-isle (you never see more than a little bay).

I missed the get-everyone-dancing-in-the-aisles energy of the original stage show where confused suburbanites wondered why we knew all the words to ABBA tunes from the 1970s and heaven-forbid would get up to dance during a Broadway spectacle!

Hope, however, is not lost in the musical this weekend, because Neil Patrick Harris has an evil plan to bring it to the interwebs and perhaps take over the world.

A writer's strike induced whim of a project from Joss Whedon and company, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is a warped trio of episodes chronicling the rise of an Harris' evil henchman and his trusty death ray. Throw in Nathan Fillion as a sterotypical all-american hero who lands the girl with a heart of gold that Dr. Horrible loves. Oh yeah, and they sing.

Pierce Brosnan eat your heart out, because a trio of mini-webisodes are eating your big screen for lunch.

You can watch the three Dr. Horrible episodes for free today and tomorrow, after that you'll have to pay a few bucks on iTunes . It's money well spent for a lark of a side project that is charming, campy and fun. I know I'll be picking up the special edition DVD.

Between this and How I Met Your Mother, I am just loving the reinvention of Neil Patrick Harris (no, I haven't seen his unicorn turn on the Harold and Kumar movies, but thank you stoners for bringing him back into the zeitgeist).