Mamma Mia! They-a have-a made-a a complete-a mess-a of-a this-a film-a!
Written: Jul 22 '08
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Um... one scene was pretty good...
Cons: ... bad singing, bad acting, very unfunny...
The Bottom Line: Just about scraped the second star for the rating. Men avoid, women might enjoy if Inebriated...
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| captaind's Full Review: Mamma Mia! |
Mamma Mia! is the film of the stage phenomenon set to the music of Swedish pop legends Abba. The show has gone from strength to strength and Abba’s popularity seems to never wane, so I guess a movie version was inevitable. Hyped as “the feel-good movie of the year”, Mamma Mia managed to disappoint me on every level... here’s why...
The plot – a young woman about to get married wants to find out who her father is, and having narrowed it down to three possibilities via reading her mother’s diary of the year she was born, she invites all three to the wedding without her mother’s knowledge, to riotously funny effect. Well... I’m guessing that was the effect they were aiming for, anyway. The young woman, Sophie, is played by Amanda Seyfried, who looks great in a swimsuit but gives little evidence of being able to act or sing. Her mother Donna is played by Meryl Streep, whose acting credentials are unquestionable but whose singing ranges from awful to fairly decent pub singer.
Then we have the three potential fathers, Sam, Harry and Bill (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard respectively), who go through the motions, attempt to sing (unbelievably my wife actually defends Brosnan’s attempts at singing here), and... well, that’s it really. There was definitely some potential for funny scenes in this movie but most of them fall very flat indeed. (Oddly most of the 90-95% female audience seemed to find many parts of the movie absolutely hilarious, but for me people dressing up oddly, people falling over or the height of sophisticated humour – wait for it – people falling into water ceased to be particularly amusing some time ago. Not that such things can’t be funny, but here’s they’re just... not.) Donna’s friends Rosie and Tanya (Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) were occasionally amusing, perhaps about 50% hit to miss ratio, while Sophie’s friends were utterly sickening and fortunately not in the movie very much. None of the acting was impressive, and some of it was downright laughable. Oh well, at least the scenery was nice...
Every so often things picked up and there was a small scene that was genuinely amusing or emotional (or at least vaguely entertaining), but usually these were interrupted by a song that made you want to crush your own windpipe (usually those sung by Meryl Streep). It’s not that the songs and music were bad in themselves – after all, how many people don’t like Abba? – but the singing was sometimes bad, sometimes really bad, and sometimes absolutely abysmal. I wouldn’t have minded so much buy the film wasn’t played as an absurd comedy, it seemed to be taking itself seriously (which was absurd in itself), and thus the poor singing was unforgivable. The way some of the songs were introduced was so contrived that it could have been used for comic effect but no... And come on people, if you like Abba, put on an Abba CD! Why would you want to listen to their songs being murdered like this? At least in the stage musical you’ll have people who can actually sing. The rationale for Hollywood producers to put together a cast of non-singing non-dancing actors for musicals has often seemed incredible, but in Mamma Mia it’s simply beyond belief.
Towards the end the film turns into the absurd comedy that it could have been all along, so that even when Brosnan’s painful tones reach your ears, you’re much more inclined to laugh than cringe. The scene in the church near the end, when the wedding is supposed to have taken place (after a rather large plot hole to focus on two characters in particular – just where were the other two people who’d been promised to walk Sophie down the aisle?!? ) was funny and contained some unexpected plot twists, and basically saved this mess of a movie from the one star rating it otherwise so richly deserved.
To sum up... the plot’s fairly decent, the acting is so hammy that a pig farmer would be embarrassed, and singing that would send that farmer’s pigs away in disgust. Mamma Mia had looked like it was going to be a lot of fun, but in the end it was merely painful to watch and even more painful to listen to. Avoid unless you are a masochist or unbelievably easy to please. If you have a Y chromosome, just don’t bother – it’s not worth the agony.
Related Links
Meryl Streep – First Do No Harm
Pierce Brosnan – , Around the World in Eighty Days (mini-series)
Colin Firth - Bridget Jones‘ Diary, Bridget Jones‘ Diary 2: The Edge of Reason, Nanny McPhee, St Trinians [2007], The Last Legion
Top Ten Musicals
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: Girl Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Everything
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