Flawed 'Mamma Mia' still fun
As a movie musical, "Mamma Mia!" is a mess.
But a most amusing mess.
It features Hollywood icon Meryl Streep bouncing around the Greek islands like a giddy teenager, effortlessly belting out ABBA songs as if she'd performed the original recordings.
It also features Pierce Brosnan, who confirms that no actor who's ever played James Bond should be allowed to sing in public. Sean Connery warbling an Irish ditty at the end of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" should have warned us.
"Mamma Mia!," for those woefully behind the culture curve, is a movie based on a stage show based on the songs of ABBA, who are something like the Swedish Beatles with more hits than a Chicago mob enforcer. The same people who mounted the stage show - director Phyllida Lloyd and writer Catherine Johnson - made this film, which means the joyous, toe-tapping enthusiasm has been preserved from the theatrical production, but the cinematic elements are woefully underwhelming and inconsistent.
Not that this matters to people who will be immersed in Abbaville and mesmerized by the glossy, picture-postcard captures of the Greek coast where American transplant Donna (Streep) has been operating a small bed-and-breakfast business. Her gorgeous daughter Sophie (a doe-eyed, radiantly youthful Amanda Seyfried) is getting married the next day, and preparations are high gear for the big event.
Sophie hasn't told Mom that she has invited three special guests: divorced architect Sam (Brosnan), boring investment banker Harry (Colin Firth) and world-famous travel writer Bill (Stellan Skarsgard). According to Donna's diary from 18 years ago, which Sophie has secretly read, one of these men must be her father.
Convinced she will know her father once she meets him, Sophie fantasizes he will give her away at the wedding.
This simplistic, intentionally unrealistic plot works well enough to hang a play list of ABBA's greatest hits on. But unlike Julie Taymor's musical "Across the Universe" that skillfully wove Beatles tunes into a coherent narrative, "Mamma Mia!" shoves, stuffs and crams ABBA songs in places where they simply don't fit. "The Winner Takes It All," for instance, feels as if it's been shoehorned into the script with a lot of flashy Steadicam shots to prop up its visual quotient.
On the other end of the scale, Donna's tender rendition of "Slipping Through My Fingers" to Sophie during a soft-focus moment should justifiably reduce viewing parents to emotional mush.
Early in the story, Donna is joined by her two best friends, Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski), two former wild women who performed on stage with her as "Donna and the Dynamos" back in the day. They lead most of the big production numbers, among them "Dancing Queen" and "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" where generic townspeople magically pop up (sometimes out of the ocean!) to supply the trio with backup vocals.
Amazingly, the non-singer stars sound pretty good singing their own songs in this film. Except, of course, for Brosnan, whose pained attempts to force a melody elicited embarrassed laughs from a disbelieving audience at a screening last week.
Remember to stick around after the credits start. Like the stage production, "Mamma Mia!" caps its feel-good show with a Donna and the Dynamos finale.
But hey, it's one thing for us to be subjected to 007's singing. Do we have to see him dressed up like a 1970s disco dancing queen, too?
"Mamma Mia!"
Starring: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Colin Firth.
Directed by: Phyllida Lloyd.
Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated PG-13 (sexual references). 108 minutes.