Mamma Mia! Review
By Karen Dahlstrom
ABBA-cadabra
At some point in "Mamma Mia!", one has to decide either to just "go along with it" or to run screaming for the exit. That point is most likely when Pierce Brosnan begins to sing the ABBA hit "S.O.S.".
On the stage, "Mamma Mia!" was (and still is) a Broadway hit, weaving the songs of Swedish supergroup ABBA into a narrative about a wedding on a Greek island. Translating a Broadway musical to film is always a challenge, but casting big-name actors to belt out syrupy '70s pop hits is even more of a risk. Whether or not the risk pays off depends on the audience's willingness to go along for the ride.
Sophie (a saucer-eyed Amanda Seyfried) lives on a Greek island with her free-spirited mother, Donna (Meryl Streep). Once the lead singer in a girl group called Donna and the Dynamos, Donna now busies herself with running a rustic hotel and clucking over her young daughter's wedding. 20-year-old Sophie is set to marry her love, Sky, but dreams of having her father give her away. Unfortunately, she has no idea who her father is.
Upon finding her mother's racy diary, Sophie determines that her father is one of three men Donna romanced during one very lusty summer. Unbeknownst to her mother, Sophie sends wedding invitations (in Donna's name) to her three former paramours: wild adventurer Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), stuffy businessman Harry (Colin Firth) and hunky architect Sam (Pierce Brosnan). Despite having seen neither hide nor hair of Donna in over twenty years, all three immediately race off to Greece.
On top of the chaos surrounding the wedding arrangements and trying to keep her ramshackle hotel from crumbling all around her, Donna is understandably shaken up by the surprise appearance of three men from her past. She deals with it the only way a woman can — by bursting into song. Accompanied by a Greek chorus of villagers and by her best friends and former band members Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters), Donna expresses her feelings of love and loss through the immortal works of ABBA.
But she's not the only one. Everyone (and I mean everyone) gets their chance to dig into the ABBA catalog as the story becomes more fantastic, more unrepentantly silly. This is the crux of the "Mamma Mia!" experience. If musicals aren't your thing, you'll find yourself squirming in your seat within the first five minutes. (Adding to the discomfort is the fact that the women of this little island are all completely hysterical. I don't mean funny. I mean, these women need to calm down and take a breath before they fall off a cliff.) However, if you're willing to just "go with it", "Mamma Mia!" becomes an exuberantly frothy and joyous romp.
If you choose to, ahem, "take a chance" on "Mamma Mia!", you'll be rewarded with some charming performances, especially by the surprisingly adorable Meryl Streep. Pushing 60, Streep channels her inner teen, gamely doing air splits and gallivanting around in skin-tight, spangled disco wear while belting ABBA hits at the top of her lungs. There is no trace of irony or self-consciousness in Streep's performance. She fully embraces the character and the project, giving it her all at every turn. She's even able to use her considerable acting chops to transform "The Winner Takes it All" into a moving confessional.
What makes "Mamma Mia!" work is that, like Streep, each and every actor in the film is simply going with it. No matter how silly, how implausible, how cheesy, they are committed 200% to selling each and every moment of the film. Even if they aren't the best singers (Brosnan) or dancers (Skarsgård), it doesn't seem to matter. The innocent exuberance of ABBA's music carries the cast and the audience away, like a night of drunken karaoke. It's all in good fun — embarrassing, silly, joyous, unrestrained fun. As the song says, it's magic.
