‘A-ha: The Movie’ Review: An Appreciative Take on Them

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticYou’d think the songs that we call one-hit wonders — I’ve always applied the term interchangeably to bands and songs — would, by their nature, have the quality of novelty singles.

A lot of them do, like “Come On Eileen” or “I’m Too Sexy” or “Spirit in the Sky” or “867-5309 (Jenny)” or “96 Tears.” But occasionally there’s a one-hit wonder that’s so transcendent it qualifies as one of the greatest pop songs you’ve ever heard — which makes it all the more mysterious that the band in question never came within a million miles of replicating its sublimity or success.

I’m thinking of songs like “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba, “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone, or the song that may be the greatest one-hit wonder of them all: “Take On Me” by the Norwegian synth-pop trio A-ha.

As the new documentary “A-ha: The Movie” makes clear, A-ha have been around long enough, and have enjoyed enough sustained in-concert fan exuberance, to make the one-hit-wonder classification seem a bit of a slight. (I’m sure the fans would see it that way.) In a career that stretches back 35 years, A-ha have sold 50 million records and have played to crowds of 200,000. “Take On Me” appeared on their first album, “Hunting High and Low,” released in October 1985 (though an earlier version of the song had appeared the year before), and since then they’ve released an additional 10 albums.