Featured Review: MAMMA MIA!

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Mamma Mia!



Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper



Directed by Phyllida Lloyd



Grade: C+



"I don't care if you've slept with hundreds of men!"
"I haven't slept with hundreds of men..."

If last year's Sweeney Todd was an exercise in bringing the ultra-dark, consummately Gothic stylings of Broadway to the multiplex near you, Mamma Mia! could be considered the polar opposite. With its flamboyant costumes, beautiful and entirely dreamt up exteriors of Greek isles, and gads of pretty people of European ancestry singing along to the collective works of ABBA, Mamma Mia! is less a movie experience but a theatre revue filmed for a community playhouse.

I'm not here to judge the merits of the actual musical, for I'm sure the stage-to-screen transition lost many elements that made the Broadway/West End/Las Vegas show such a smash hit. But one certainly has to wonder why there's such a fervor for a franchise revolving around cheeky disco-flavored Swedish pop music that is 30 years old. Across The Universe worked because there was a multitude of great Beatles songs to play around with. How can they possibly fit such ABBA gold as "Dancing Queen" and "S.O.S." into a workable storyline?

Sophie (Mean Girls' Amanda Seyfried) is a beautiful young lady living in a resort town in Greece. She's about to be married, but there's still one major aspect of her life she hasn't wrapped up. The identity of her father. After reading through her mother Donna's (Meryl Streep) diary, Sophie finds out it can be one of three men from different parts of the world. Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) are all invited, all show up, and all must play a game of cat and mouse with Sophie's, and especially Donna's, feelings.

It's the kind of movie that you absolutely cannot take seriously. Nearly everyone on the island aside from say, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski (channeling her best Samantha Jones and Nina Van Horn) are young, fabulously gorgeous and have no duties but to group together and dance the day, afternoon, and night away. And if they aren't immaculately good-looking, the older ones like Baranski have the promiscuous spirit and spunk to make up for it.

It's the kind of movie where Streep's Donna can pity herself for living in one of Earth's paradises. Where there's only one black person and he's instantly attracted to the older ladies. Where one of the fathers can be swarmed by a sea of young, attractive ladies, then instantly realize he's gay. Where Pierce Brosnan, a famous Irishman, is tabbed to play an American, and yet cannot hold a tune in any dialect.

Thankfully both productions stay away from such kitsch hits as "Waterloo" and "Fernando" (although Streep hums the latter tune while walking about the village, and the cast sings the former in credit-rolling, non-canonical camp fashion). While it doesn't fit the context of the film's spectrum, "Dancing Queen" is the most joyous and infectious number, giving the village cast a few minutes to drop what they're doing and go on a town excursion with Donna.

The performances and tonal voices range from very good to "if he can't sing, why the heck did they cast him then?". Meryl Streep at some points of Mamma Mia! carries the movie on her back, giving a surprisingly well-rounded singing and acting accomplishment. 'Surprising' shouldn't be a word used for a 14-time Academy Award nominated actress, but Streep at 59, is quite spry and jubilant throughout. Her swan song, "The Winner Takes It All", isn't the most realized piece of pop music, but Streep commands a good acting presentation while pulling off the singing. It's guaranteed she'll add a record-tying 22nd Golden Globe nomination for this film, and it's possible she'll pick up Prezzie and Oscar bids.

Seyfried, Baranski, Walters, Cooper and even Skarsgard hold their own in various degrees, and Colin Firth does okay. His one solo, an acoustic folk version of "Our Last Summer" is suspect, but he gets through it. But the real travesty is Brosnan. His character is the lead of the three possible fathers, and his two big numbers are almost a pain to sit through. The Streep/Brosnan duet "S.O.S." is supposed to be a climax leading into the final act of the film, but his jarring lack of vocal range, best described as not having any whatsoever, pretty much ruins whatever emotion is coming out of Streep. His "When All Is Said And Done" is stranger yet.

It's good to see the movie musical trickling back into contemporary cinema after many years of exile. But whereas some recent musicals, Chicago, Dreamgirls, Across The Universe, Moulin Rouge! and et cetera have attempted to put a modern day film technique on the tried and true classic genre, Mamma Mia! plays like a forgettable MGM picture during the height of the movie musical generation of the 1940s and early 50s. The only changes made is the progressive sexuality and the retro-hip soundtrack. Like the band that provides said soundtrack, Mamma Mia! is just an aberration in the pop culture lexicon.