Mamma Mia! «««
PG-13, 108m. 2008
Cast & Credits: Meryl Streep (Donna), Amanda Seyfried (Sophie), Pierce Brosnan (Sam Carmichael), Christine Baranski (Tanya), Julie Walters (Rosie), Stellan Skarsgard (Bill), Colin Firth (Harry Bright), Dominic Cooper (Sky). Screenplay by Catherine Johnson. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd.
Mamma Mia! falls into the category of being both a guilty pleasure and the kind of film that’s not nearly as bad as what most critics are saying it is. No, I don’t put it anywhere close to the big screen musical adaptations of such long running Broadway productions I have enjoyed such as West Side Story (1961), Evita (1996), Chicago (2002), Phantom of the Opera (2004), and Dreamgirls (2006).
Mamma Mia!, at the very least, isn’t as laughable as some of the big screen musical misfires of the early '70s and '80s like Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Xanadu (1980), and Give My Regards to Broadstreet (1984). You could disregard the unbelievable storylines where, for example, the actors in JCS got off a bus in what looked to resemble either the Grand Canyon or the Middle East to sing and act out Christ’s last days. Or the artist in Xanadu; his female drawing comes to life in the form of Olivia Newton John. Or ex-Beatle Paul McCartney; he has a nightmare that his recording tapes from his latest album have been stolen in Broadstreet. The fantasy nightmare runs close to two hours.
On the scale of most favored big screen musicals with West Side Story ranking the highest to Jesus Christ Superstar; the lowest, I’d put Mamma Mia! in the middle.
The film is modeled after the long running Broadway musical, which made its American premiere in May 2000 and is based on songs from the 1970's Swedish rock band, ABBA. The musical continues to play in sold out shows across the country and I can understand why. It’s all because of the music, which yes, you’d probably have to be a fan of in order to truly understand the band’s and the play’s popularity much less even appreciate them.
The first time I heard any of Abba’s songs was back when in the mid 1970s when I was in grade school. I’d come home to hear a variety of singles from Frank Sinatra to the Bee Gees blaring from the stereo that my dad had running. Among the different titles playing from an assortment of bands was Abba’s "SOS" and "Dancing Queen."
At the time, I didn’t care too much for "SOS" whose lyrics were about a marriage in trouble, but I did enjoy the fast paced "Dancing Queen" and yes, I am not ashamed to say that today I sometimes have it playing in the car to and from work.
It wasn’t until I started working for an I.T. computer support helpdesk decades later that I got into listening to several of the band’s other songs. This was all thanks in part to Greg Hehn, a fellow co-worker who often during the late night graveyard shifts when there were no calls coming in would sometimes have Abba’s CD of their greatest hits playing from his cubicle.
A majority of those greatest hits are heard in Mamma Mia! about a broke work-a-holic hotel owner in Greece and single mother named Donna (Meryl Streep) who must not only contend with preparing the upcoming wedding of her daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). She must also confront her apparently wild sexual past when three of her ex-boyfriends from the 1960s (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgard) arrive on the island who Sophie secretly invited to her wedding upon reading her mother’s diary that one of these three could be her father.
The film’s best moments are when the cast burst into song ,which in some cases, plays out like those music videos on MTV. Like "SOS", most of the songs deal with the character’s situations the way several of The Beatles music was adapted in Across the Universe (2007) to fit the stormy political times of the 1960s. When Donna tells her two closest friends (Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) how she never has a day off, she begins singing “Money, Money, Money.”
“I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay,” Donna sings. “Ain’t it sad?”
At Sophie’s bachelorette party, her friends sing “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A Man After Midnight” as they serenade Donna’s former boyfriends.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t care about Mamma Mia!’s predictable story which plays along the lines of a soap opera. The top musicals I enjoyed not only had great soundtracks, some of which were worth purchasing, but had interesting storylines that were either loosely based on real life people (Evita), were based on supposed murder cases (Chicago) or horror mysteries (Phantom of the Opera). The tragic love story, for example, in West Side Story was inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
Mamma Mia! literally grinds to a halt the moment the characters speak without singing the way the Star Wars prequels sometimes stalled the minute the lightsabers shut off. It’s only when they burst into song that the movie comes to life, which is quite often.
Besides, unlike Donna, whom it seems to take more than half the film to find out the real reason why her three former boyfriends are all on the island the day of her daughter’s wedding, I knew immediately who Donna's one true love and Sophie’s father was.
It don’t take brain surgery looking at the three male stars (Brosnan, Firth, and Skarsgard) as to who that person is. Ask yourself of the three, who’s the more popular actor American audiences most identify with?
Mamma Mia! has one thing going for it; the joy of watching the cast sing their hearts out, Streep in particular, who like Al Pacino, can act in any film, good or bad, and manage to still come out unscathed. Whether she is jumping on the bed and on the sea decks singing “Dancing Queen” or singing about having to let her daughter go off to live her own life in “Slipping Through My Fingers”, Streep looks like she hasn’t had this much fun making a movie in years.
All right, there are two things. I liked the soundtrack, which I bought, and by the time the movie was over, I felt like uttering the words to one of Abba’s songs, “Thank you for the music.”
©7/23/08
PG-13, 108m. 2008
Cast & Credits: Meryl Streep (Donna), Amanda Seyfried (Sophie), Pierce Brosnan (Sam Carmichael), Christine Baranski (Tanya), Julie Walters (Rosie), Stellan Skarsgard (Bill), Colin Firth (Harry Bright), Dominic Cooper (Sky). Screenplay by Catherine Johnson. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd.
Mamma Mia!, at the very least, isn’t as laughable as some of the big screen musical misfires of the early '70s and '80s like Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Xanadu (1980), and Give My Regards to Broadstreet (1984). You could disregard the unbelievable storylines where, for example, the actors in JCS got off a bus in what looked to resemble either the Grand Canyon or the Middle East to sing and act out Christ’s last days. Or the artist in Xanadu; his female drawing comes to life in the form of Olivia Newton John. Or ex-Beatle Paul McCartney; he has a nightmare that his recording tapes from his latest album have been stolen in Broadstreet. The fantasy nightmare runs close to two hours.
On the scale of most favored big screen musicals with West Side Story ranking the highest to Jesus Christ Superstar; the lowest, I’d put Mamma Mia! in the middle.
The film is modeled after the long running Broadway musical, which made its American premiere in May 2000 and is based on songs from the 1970's Swedish rock band, ABBA. The musical continues to play in sold out shows across the country and I can understand why. It’s all because of the music, which yes, you’d probably have to be a fan of in order to truly understand the band’s and the play’s popularity much less even appreciate them.
The first time I heard any of Abba’s songs was back when in the mid 1970s when I was in grade school. I’d come home to hear a variety of singles from Frank Sinatra to the Bee Gees blaring from the stereo that my dad had running. Among the different titles playing from an assortment of bands was Abba’s "SOS" and "Dancing Queen."
At the time, I didn’t care too much for "SOS" whose lyrics were about a marriage in trouble, but I did enjoy the fast paced "Dancing Queen" and yes, I am not ashamed to say that today I sometimes have it playing in the car to and from work.
It wasn’t until I started working for an I.T. computer support helpdesk decades later that I got into listening to several of the band’s other songs. This was all thanks in part to Greg Hehn, a fellow co-worker who often during the late night graveyard shifts when there were no calls coming in would sometimes have Abba’s CD of their greatest hits playing from his cubicle.
A majority of those greatest hits are heard in Mamma Mia! about a broke work-a-holic hotel owner in Greece and single mother named Donna (Meryl Streep) who must not only contend with preparing the upcoming wedding of her daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). She must also confront her apparently wild sexual past when three of her ex-boyfriends from the 1960s (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgard) arrive on the island who Sophie secretly invited to her wedding upon reading her mother’s diary that one of these three could be her father.
The film’s best moments are when the cast burst into song ,which in some cases, plays out like those music videos on MTV. Like "SOS", most of the songs deal with the character’s situations the way several of The Beatles music was adapted in Across the Universe (2007) to fit the stormy political times of the 1960s. When Donna tells her two closest friends (Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) how she never has a day off, she begins singing “Money, Money, Money.”
“I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay,” Donna sings. “Ain’t it sad?”
At Sophie’s bachelorette party, her friends sing “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A Man After Midnight” as they serenade Donna’s former boyfriends.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t care about Mamma Mia!’s predictable story which plays along the lines of a soap opera. The top musicals I enjoyed not only had great soundtracks, some of which were worth purchasing, but had interesting storylines that were either loosely based on real life people (Evita), were based on supposed murder cases (Chicago) or horror mysteries (Phantom of the Opera). The tragic love story, for example, in West Side Story was inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
Mamma Mia! literally grinds to a halt the moment the characters speak without singing the way the Star Wars prequels sometimes stalled the minute the lightsabers shut off. It’s only when they burst into song that the movie comes to life, which is quite often.
Besides, unlike Donna, whom it seems to take more than half the film to find out the real reason why her three former boyfriends are all on the island the day of her daughter’s wedding, I knew immediately who Donna's one true love and Sophie’s father was.
It don’t take brain surgery looking at the three male stars (Brosnan, Firth, and Skarsgard) as to who that person is. Ask yourself of the three, who’s the more popular actor American audiences most identify with?
Mamma Mia! has one thing going for it; the joy of watching the cast sing their hearts out, Streep in particular, who like Al Pacino, can act in any film, good or bad, and manage to still come out unscathed. Whether she is jumping on the bed and on the sea decks singing “Dancing Queen” or singing about having to let her daughter go off to live her own life in “Slipping Through My Fingers”, Streep looks like she hasn’t had this much fun making a movie in years.
All right, there are two things. I liked the soundtrack, which I bought, and by the time the movie was over, I felt like uttering the words to one of Abba’s songs, “Thank you for the music.”
©7/23/08
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