Mamma Mia! (2008)

Mamma Mia! (2008)

November 12, 2008

Northwest Airlines Flight, Seattle, WA to Honolulu, HI

* / ****

By Scott Muoio

Just because the people making a movie are having fun doesn’t mean I have to enjoy watching them. That is the crux of the disastrous Mamma Mia!, the new Phyllida Lloyd film based on the hit musical and featuring the songs of Swedish pop stars Abba.

The film’s story involves a mother/daughter tandem, Donna (Meryl Streep) and Sophie (Amanda Siefried) living on a tiny Greek island and bracing for the arrival of wedding guests mere days before Sophie’s nuptial extravaganza. Snooping in her mother’s diary, Sophie devises an enormous coo: wedding invitations for three men she surmises may be her blood father. Neither the men nor Sophie’s mother know what she has done but oh, they will find out! Let the hilarity (and the singing) begin…

Mamma Mia’s premise isn’t too shabby and maybe a quarter of the Abba songs are decent. That’s the good of the film. Unfortunately, with the terrible casting, goofy performances, and all manner of yelling, screaming, and self-indulging shenanigans leading to a completely unsatisfying and ridiculous conclusion the film sinks faster than the Titanic.

Meryl Streep is beyond a poor choice for Donna. A handywoman content to run a decrepit hotel on a Mediterranean island, she is not. Her singing is OK but the way she overdoes every aspect of the character makes her neither sassy, spunky, nor endearing. Instead, she’s just plain boring, annoying, and unbelievable.

The triumvirate of men whose arrival alone makes no sense whatsoever is likewise disappointing. Either wasting their talent with a pointless role (Stellan Skarsgard), thrust into a position they can’t make work (Pierce Brosnan singing, anyone?), or shoe horned into a character (Colin Hirth) whose actions are the result of script writers without a purpose unsure what to have them do they provide little to the story other than the mere act of being three different penises to be led around by the commanding women.

My word, I could go on and on berating this movie for the pain it caused me. Instead, I will simply advise that the other half of Flight 816’s double bill, the silly bad action/adventure Brendan Frasier flick, Journey to the Center of the Earth, was by far the better film of the two. That might not be completely apparent if you based your analysis on the toe-tapping, Dancing Queen humming older woman who sat next to me on the plane, but take my word for it: she was drunk. Really drunk.

Bottom line: Mamma Mia! stinks.