The long-running West End and Broadway musical Mamma Mia!, based on the music of Swedish pop maestros Benny and Bjorn of the world famous ABBA, makes the transition from stage to screen with great exuberance but minor ambition. Meryl Streep stars as Donna, a single mother and former front woman of Donna & The Dynamos (an ABBA-esque girl group), who settles down to raise her daughter and run a hotel on an idyllic and remote Greek island. The daughter in question, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), is due to be married and wants her father to give her away. The problem is she doesn’t know exactly who he is. She steals her mother’s 20 year-old diary and discovers the names of three potential dads: Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth), and Bill (Stellan Skarsgard). She invites all three of them to the wedding hoping that things will work themselves out and she’ll get her wish. Meanwhile, Donna’s feeling a nostalgia resurgence in life with the return of her old friends and bandmates for the wedding (Christine Baranski and a scene-stealing Julie Walters of Harry Potter fame). Her crisis is fueled further by the arrival of her old flames who send her into a tizzy and force her to reconcile herself with her past and her choices for the future.Mamma Mia! is undeniably good product. It bounces across the screen on a waft of raw energy and giggling girlishness. For the right crowd, it should be nothing less than ecstasy. For everyone else, it’s something approaching torture. Classic ABBA tunes arrive with unbridled giddiness and the cast of amateur singers, gushing to the brim with contagious Swedish cheer, melt and swoon as those synth chords erupt. They prance around the Greek hillside. They jet ski. They even frolic around with the hired help. What this all amounts to is nothing short of a mystery. Songs stumble into frame abruptly and exist with just as much subtlety. Nearly none of the music chosen advances the narrative (what little there is) but simply serve as a cheery soundtrack by which director Phyllida Lloyd can pace her endless stream of musical montages. Hey, it’s “Money Money Money”! Let’s show Vegas! Give me a roulette wheel! Wait? Can we superimpose Meryl Streep’s face onto the roulette wheel? We can? Awesome!
The saving grace of the film is that even when their inexperienced voices fleck and flake, the cast performs admirably and with abounding energy. They are charming to the end and because of that the film is made mostly watchable and occasionally even enjoyable. Seeing the usually dour Streep unburdened of expressive makeup and a complicated accent for a light and jubilant role is a reward in and of itself. As the sweet and sassy contemporary mom Donna she nervously belts out “Mamma Mia” at the sight of her former beaus, reunites with old gal pals for a silly rendition of “Dancing Queen,” and breathtakingly bears her soul with “The Winner Takes It All.” She benefits from having some of the strongest ABBA tracks with the most organic moments of emergence. Streep’s voice waivers occasionally in slow spots of breathless lyrical storytelling but shines when she powers through on those massive ABBA choruses. She’s joyous, and believably so, which is rare in a film where everyone is constantly hooting and hollering as if they simply cannot control the glee that ABBA brings to them. Young leading lady Amanda Seyfried, best known for her role as a ditz in Mean Girls but most renowned for performances in smaller films such as Nine Lives and the HBO series “Big Love,” does not equal Streep but glimmers with almost as much sun-tanned soulfulness. She’s a charmer here with a warmth and genuineness that makes her ridiculous character, a girl who seriously believes simply glancing upon her father will cause fireworks to descend from the skies and “Waterloo” to burst out of imaginary speakers in the clouds, an innocent sweetheart rather than a daft fool. Her voice stands ably alongside the rest of the cast and stands out at the most distinctly modern and Top 40-esque of the bunch. Her take on “I Have A Dream” seems destined to become a heart song for teen girls everywhere.
Beneath the sugary pop songs and the beautiful scenery there is most certainly….nothing. So take it or leave it. Meryl Streep and Co. make do with the material and serve up a feature more fitting of the term “fun romp” than any before. And not condescendingly so (OK, maybe a little). It’s hard to imagine anyone on set had any greater expectations. Whether or not it’s enough to make the film recommendable is subject to debate. I can’t foresee this leaping from beyond its OMG girl power ghetto and becoming something universally admired or appreciated. It exists. It is real. But it is barely even there. You can go for the glitz and the silly sing-along songs or you can skip it and see The Dark Knight instead. Either way, this is not a film likely to occupy your consciousness for very long.
Grade: C
