Cast: Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters

Director: Phyllida Lloyd

Screenplay: Catherine Johnson

Running time: 1 hr 48 mins

Genre: Musical



CRITIQUE:

Mamma Mia!, for all its worth, is the cinematic equivalent of Red Bull. The first swig is mighty zesty, but whence you have too much of it, it’ll knock out your nerves. Clearly for a film that grossed bigger than The Dark Knight in UK (yes, people, bigger moolah than The Dark Knight – The – Dark – Knight!), there’s a seemingly unavoidable, inevitable appeal to this adult chick flick. If High School Musical is the most exciting thing that ever happened to all thirteen-year olds and under, Mamma Mia! might very well be the same for anyone over forty, and very female. Well, that cinema stampede and sing-along you hear consists of women who delegated the night’s washing up to their husbands for a time of a girlie night-out. And all hell breaks loose. And that hell you see is full of sunshine and rainbow colours.


That’s how exactly Mamma Mia! works. It pleases and gives a damn good time, and making you forget that there’s a lot of ironing to do later. If you’re looking for some Oscar-worthy attention here, this is not the right place. It is squeaky clean, campy fun, and as morally ambiguous as the clear blue sea. The stage musical, worldly famous, gets the cinematic treatment and the result is encompassing of all shades of rainbow. And there’s a whole list of Abba songbook to squeeze in between dramatic sighs, romantic misadventures and a plot ridden with clichés. Three fathers turn up for the blasted wedding (really?), girl tries to question identity through her wedding day (really?) – this is probably the most outrageous wedding on Earth ever filmed. Of course, there are huge dance numbers and karaoke-inducing, toe-thumping, song-breaking musical sequences; one ridiculous but amusing “Dancing Queen” with Meryl Streep leading the whole village to shake some booty. However, there are musical misfires, look at the cloyingly silly boys on flippers, and since this flick is so centred on women that when the lads get to sing, it emerges as unintentionally hilarious. The blokes are just backdrops, since this feels like a hen party. Amanda Seyfried is cute and sweet as the lead, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski take comedic turns as the girlpower sidekicks, but it’s Meryl Streep that conquers all though and through, since the world’s greatest actress alive has some good lungs, and thankfully, good acting.


VERDICT:

The cinematic counterpart of Abba karaoke songbook, fun, agreeable, but that’s about it. It feels forced and nothing special. This is High School Musical for the middle-aged, although only Streep runs away with its success.



RATING: C