Let me clear the air by saying that I was unwillingly dragged to see “Mamma Mia!”, the latest Hollywood interpretation of a stage musical.
Clearly, I’m not the type of person the people behind the film adaptation of “Mamma Mia!” were trying to please. People like me, who are generally against musicals can and should find a better way to spend their time at the movies and leave the people who are actually interested in this film to see it. However, I truly feel bad for anybody dragged to this incessantly corny and nearly insufferable movie musical that is so bad, even the presence of Meryl Streep can’t save it.
So, if I normally resist big, lavish movie musicals such as this, am I really the right person to review “Mamma Mia!”? Well, I’d say no, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. I’m not reviewing this movie for the fans of the musical, because I know that they’ll be pleased with what they get; I’m reviewing it for everyone else. Now, that’s not to say that I automatically give every single musical I see a negative review. I really enjoyed 2005’s “The Producers” as well as “Chicago” from 2002, and last year’s “Sweeney Todd” was my pick for the second-best film of 2007. What ultimately made me not like “Mamma Mia!”, I guess you could say, was the simple fact that the film seriously missed every single mark it was trying to hit. This movie is meant to be a fun, breezy hour and forty-eight minutes at the theater, but I thought there wasn’t any fun to be had and due to its dragged-out songs, there was nothing breezy about it. Whereas “Sweeney Todd” played like a smooth flowing and hauntingly beautiful opera, and rather successfully at that, “Mamma Mia!” instead plays out like karaoke night in Greece.
Well, let’s face it. Musicals aren’t meant to have elaborate or intricately crafted plots and that’s the case here (which invites another comparison to “Sweeney Todd” that I’ll make later). The plot for “Mamma Mia!” is paper-thin and it always comes to a complete halt whenever the next musical number starts up. So, the light and bright Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married to stud muffin Sky (Dominic Cooper), who incidentally has cloudy eyes. Sophia’s one wish, though, is to have her father attend her wedding and give her away to her McDreamy. The only problem is that her catamite of a mother named Donna (Meryl Streep) slept with three different men around the time Sophia would have been conceived. That means that there are three possible candidates for the title of ‘Dear Old Dad’: Bill (Stellan Skarsgard), Sam (Pierce Brosnan) and Harry (Colin Firth). And yet another problem is that Donna doesn’t want any of them at the wedding. But as we all know, they’ll inevitably stay and that will cause serious romantic decisions to be made in one weekend that would normally take more than a weekend to decide to be made in, well, one weekend.
The plot’s only true purpose is to act as an engine to get us from one musical to the next, and that’s one of the biggest problems I’ve always had with musicals. I can understand the necessity for an uncomplicated plot, but still, why can’t the writers at least try to bring more to the storyline so that the movie doesn’t feel like it can simply end at any given moment if one of the three men just came up and revealed that they are the father of Sophie? Plus, I think it’s safe to say that you can pretty much guess who the father is by the way the camera lingers on each individual bachelor. Now, I will admit that “Sweeney Todd” does have a similarly thin plot, but the difference there is that the songs of that movie essentially were part of the plot. It avoided that choppy style because the songs actually moved everything forward. Here, the songs seem to be there just for the heck of it and while they may be mildly enjoyable, the choreography that accompanies them just makes everything feel like an overdone production of Riverdance. And I’ll say this: if I had to sit through one more musical number where men and/or teenage boys tried to imitate professional dancers on a pier, I’d have been ready to throw my bag of popcorn at the screen.
For a musical meant to have purposefully bland performances made even more bland by professional actors such as Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, then there’s something wrong in the acting department. Meryl Streep has always been a terrific actress, but she’s given virtually nothing to work with here. Oh, she can sing just fine and is definitely capable of holding her own whenever she bursts into song, but it’s the in-between stuff that had me scratching my head in wonderment, trying to discern how Streep couldn’t be up to her own standards. Also, her two shallow, giggly girlfriends portrayed by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski are the character equivalents of nails on a chalkboard. And the serious overacting of Amanda Seyfried as Sophie doesn’t help much, either.
I think the best thing about “Mamma Mia!”, though, is the scenery of Greece. Every outside scene carries vibrant sunshine, aqua-blue ocean and lime-green trees that at least give the movie points for eye candy. And if I had to say something good about the cast, it would be that Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard do pretty decent work and are the most interesting to watch.
However, when a musical is iffy on the music and very noticeably at that in addition to being a challenge to sit through, then something went wrong somewhere. I think it’s safe to say that the people who want to see “Mamma Mia!” will probably end up liking it, but me personally, I prefer my musicals to lay off the annoying choreography and make the songs pieces of the plot, rather than roadblocks to it.
Rating: 
Written by: Michael on Sun, Aug 10, 2008