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MAMMA MIA! Send This Review to a Friend
Although the story is as silly as in the stage version made to fit the Abba songs instead of the other way around, “Mamma Mia!” on screen in so unrelentingly exuberant, pretty to look at and acted and sung with wild enthusiasm by a thoroughly winsome cast that it provides entertainment hard to resist even if one’s head would dictate otherwise. For one thing, there is Meryl Streep pulling out the stops as single mom Donna running her hotel on a Greek island, preparing for her daughter’s wedding and handed a life-changing surprise. Streep seems to be having the time of her life inhabiting the flamboyant role and singing Abba. She is pure joy to watch in this further revelation of what she can do as a musical star.
It is not just her show. Amanda Seyfried is a wide-eyed delight as Sophie, the daughter, who has discovered in her mom’s diary the names of three lovers with whom she had a fling. Which one is Sophie’s father? Sophie, determined to find out, has invited all three to her wedding without telling Donna, who is in for a shock. Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard are amusing as the possible dads, who meet on the way to the island and soon are captivated by Sophie.
Considerable comic relief is provided by Donna’s old-time pals who turn up for the wedding--Christine Baranski as Tanya and Julie Walters as Rosie. Baranski has a knockout of a sexual teasing number called “Does Your Mother Know?” Dominic Cooper is good looking and forceful as Sophie’s intended.
Of course, the madness erupts to the Abba score. There is nothing Greek about the music, only the island atmosphere and the locales joining in with song and dance.
Director Phyllida Loyd and screenwriter Catherine Johnson, who based the script on her original musical book, originally conceived by Judy Craymer based on the songs of Abba, leap into the tale with economy, getting immediately into the basics within the first fifteen minutes. “Mamma Mia!” on stage was never a show for sophisticates, yet the infectious charm cut across many lines. The show has been an international success, and there is no reason to believe that the film won’t follow suit. A Universal Pictures release.
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