There's light and fizzy,
and then there's the Broadway musical Mamma Mia!, a confection with enough
sugar to dissolve teeth like an Alka-Seltzer tablet. Constructing a
play—and now a clumsily staged film—around ABBA songs is the
definition of a frivolous enterprise, and little has been done to temper the
ecstatic mood with other shadings of human emotion. On the contrary, Mamma
Mia! is a
relentless happy-making machine calibrated to beat viewers into submission, and
there are times when seems silly to try to fight it. After all, the setting is
an idyllic Greek island, there are wedding bells in the air, and there's plenty
of wacky upstairs/downstairs comedy, plus the distinct probability of platform
boots, boas, and an isle-wide sing-along to "Dancing Queen." Everyone on the
screen is really, really, really excited, so why shouldn't you be, too?
Always a pleasure in
lighter roles, Meryl Streep brings her usual effervescence (and a middling
voice) to the role of a single mother and inn proprietor preparing to marry off
her daughter (Amanda Seyfried). Without her mother's knowledge, Seyfried
invites three men to the wedding who could potentially be her father: American
architect Pierce Brosnan, British banker Colin Firth, and Swedish world
traveler Stellan Skarsgård. Seyfried didn't count on any of the three replying,
much less showing up, so she's in a quandary when they come to the island
together and throw her mother into a tizzy. For support, Streep turns to
longtime friends Julie Walters and Christine Baranski, who also served as
bandmates in the erstwhile disco outfit Donna And The Dynamos.
Much as with the leaden
big-screen adaptation of The Producers, the team behind the stage
musical—writer Catherine Johnson, producer Judy Craymer, and director
Phyllida Lloyd—are also responsible for the film version, and Mamma
Mia!
hasn't been imagined for the screen so much as shoehorned onto it. The
incongruous mix of real locations and stage sets, real voices and overdubs, is
a constant distraction, while the choreography lumbers in group numbers and
goes flat in more intimate ones. The only showstopper is Meryl Streep's
heartfelt rendition of "The Winner Takes It All," and not coincidentally, it's
also the one time the film introduces a note of gravity to the proceedings. The
rest of the time, Mamma Mia! force-feeds bliss.