Saturday, July 19, 2008

At the Movies: Mamma Mia!

On a small Greek island, a young girl named Sophie is set to be married. She invites three men to her wedding, one of which, according to her mother's teenage diary, is her father. Problem is, no on knows which one. Throw in a musical soundtrack full of ABBA songs, a literal Greek Chorus, and a cast which includes Miranda Priestly, Lily Kane, Mr. Darcy, a former James Bond and Mrs. Weasley, and you have Mamma Mia!

The film version of the hit Broadway play is supremely cheesy with horrific choreography and some truly painful singing (mostly by Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, as two of Sophie's possible fathers). The direction sucks. Moments are overacted, overly long and overly stylized. In short, it's pretty much a hot tranny mess. Yet, I found myself smiling and having fun by about the 1 hour mark. Amanda Seyfried is lovely as Sophie and has a really terrific pop voice. Julie Walters is hilarious as an old friend of the family. And watching Meryl Streep (one of my living heroes) sing Winner Takes it All (my favorite ABBA song) was the highlight of the movie.

Mamma Mia! is not great and, unless you really love ABBA or musicals, I'd say skip it. However, if you're looking for a fun movie to see with your mom, you could do a lot worse.

P.S. I realize the cool points I've lost seeing Mamma Mia! instead of The Dark Knight this weekend will never be recovered, but I swear on everything holy, I'd have preferred to see The Dark Knight. I'm just waiting for the crowds to die down.

12 comments:

Falwless said...

... but I swear on everything holy, I'd have preferred to see The Dark Knight. I'm just waiting for the crowds to die down.

Nice try. Really. You might even fool some people with that lie. I know your guilty pleasures, woman. I've broken it down into an analogy -- Musicals : You :: Photosynthesis : Plants.

paperback reader said...

The reaction of me to anyone's life that leads them astray into a movie theater showing this piece of work: [derisively] ha ha ha ha ha!

paperback reader said...

Also, thanks for inspiring my post today about how much I hate the very idea of this thing.

BeckEye said...

Mamma Mia, you missed-a da Batman!

I haven't seen either movie. I have no money or time right now. So I will bide my time (until they come out on Netflix) wondering what it would be like if these two movies were combined.

SneekeeSu said...

Red should get her cool points back for going to Mama Mia with her mom and her friends!!! Such a good daughter. Even us mom's had sour faces when Pierce Bronson started singing. But the movie made us smile and want to take a vacation to Greece ! All in all just a fun make you smile movies that is good for the older set!!! You must stay through the credits until the screen goes black for one of the funniest parts of the movie!! Nuff sorry if I embarassed you Red!!!

Garney said...

At least you still have Dark Knight to look forward to. I was going to see it in IMAX Saturday night but it was sold out for the entire day when I tried to get tickets that afternoon so I caught the first IMAX showing on Sunday.

If you haven't been to the "IMAX" in Mira Mesa yet this might be the one to check it out (really you should just make the trek up to Irvine) because Nolan filmed several sequences with IMAX cameras including the incredible opening.

Falwless said...

Oh dear lord is that your mom, Red? You do realize that I can never swear on this blog ever ever again.

If my mom finds my blog I am committing suicide. Don't worry, I'll leave everything to you and Liz.

Liz said...

Thanks Falw. I'm allergic to cats though, so could you kindly get all the hair off your stuff before you kill yourself? Kthanks

MJenks said...

wow...you just dropped a Harry Potter and combined Pride and Prejudice/Bridget Jones reference in the middle of your review.

That is awesome.

feathers said...

i was faced with the same decision... fight the crowds for The Dark Knight or see something else. My two other choices were Mamma Mia or The Hulk.

Ed Norton beat out ABBA cause he's MUCH yummier!

Interesting "fact" i recently heard: The gals in ABBA did not speak English and learned their songs phonetically. hmmm, any truth to it? find out, Red... oh master of the internet search!

Red said...

There's nothing about them not speaking English on their Wikipedia page, so it must not be true.

Garney said...

Even if it were in the Wikipedia article it probably wouldn't be true.