Click to play videoCast: Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth Christine Baranski and Julie Walters
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Never have I been more relieved to see the end credits of a film as I was while watching Mamma Mia, the new musical based on ABBA songs.
It's another thing that the end credits of this film took on a life of their own, going on and on and on, one over-the-top number after another, before they finally came to a complete end.
Mamma Mia is one of the cheesiest films I've seen in a long, long time, and even Meryl Streep couldn't make it much better.
Adapted from the long-running stage musical of the same name, the film stars Streep as Donna, a single-mother who's raised her daughter on a sun-drenched Greek island where she runs a sprawling-but-shabby tourist villa.
Her daughter Sophie (played by Amanda Seyfried), now 20 and engaged to her local sweetheart, has been longing to learn the identity of her father. On finding her mother's old diary, Sophie secretly invites three of Donna's old flames to the wedding celebration.
Enter Sam, Bill and Harry (played by Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth respectively) who show up, oblivious to the reason behind the invitation. Cue for Donna to throw a hissy-fit, and for practically everyone involved to break into a series of all-song-and-dance ABBA renditions, while you cringe in embarrassment.
Unlike the stage show whose emphasis is on the 18 songs and not so much on the wafer-thin story, Mamma Mia the movie insists on treating this ridiculous plot with more seriousness than it deserves, taking away from the fact that the songs are key not the drama.
As a result, many of the numbers seem forced, which is a pity because for many of us these are songs we've grown up with — it's ABBA, for god sake!
What you will enjoy, anyway, is the camaraderie between Donna and her two best friends (played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) who show up for the wedding, and break into some of the film's more exciting numbers — Dancing Queen and Super Trouper in particular.
Also all the actors sing their own songs, so you have Meryl Streep straining her vocal chords to do The Winner Takes It All, and there's also Pierce Brosnan's eardrum-splitting warbling of SOS.
Mamma Mia isn't so much bad as it is just awkward and graceless. You really do cringe when you see such fine actors - especially Meryl Streep - up there trying to give respectability to this doomed film.
In the end, it's the sheer joy of listening to some of your favourite songs all over again that makes this film not entirely unwatchable.
But for an A-grade film experience with ABBA's music, watch Muriel's Wedding, it's smarter, funnier and a much more enjoyable picture.
This, on the other hand, is at best an average film and hence two out of five for Mamma Mia.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
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