Storyline: The movie
version of the stage musical that took
22 of Abba’s greatest hits to tell the story of a young girl on a Greek
island who is getting married and wants her dad to give her away. The
difficulty is her single mom never said who her dad might be. From mom’s
diary she determines it could have been any one of three of her mom’s former
boy friends, none of whom she has ever met. So she invites all three to the
wedding and tries to figure out which one should walk her down the aisle.
Both female leads acquit themselves nicely.
Mega-star Meryl Streep, as the mother of the bride, proves that she can sing
this kind of light pop very well while creating a pleasant character and
getting laughs at all the right places. As her daughter who wants some sort
of paternity connection, soap-opera child star (As The World Turns by
the time she was 15, All My Children at age 17) and frequent TV
actress (Law and Order, Crime Scene Investigation and others) Amanda
Seyfied proves
to be a charming youngster whose enthusiasm works well on screen. Pierce Brosnan makes a photogenic leading candidate for father of the bride, but
only seems to sing one phrase at a time as if the film editor had to select
an on-key version from among multiple cuts. Tony Award winner Christine
Baranski (Mrs. Lovett in the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration revival of
Sweeney Todd
where she earned a Helen Hayes award and
Mame two
years ago in the same hall) is one of Streep's back up singers while British
actress Julie Waters steps out of her Harry Potter films (she's been playing
"Molly Weasley" in that series) to join her in the hi-jinks.
The movie has much the same creative team as the stage
version. Phyllidia Lloyd directs with some of the emphasis on visual
brightness as on stage, but the transition from staged Greek Island beauty to
filmed reality introduces a bit of a different feel to the festivities.
Catherine Johnson adapted her script for the movie and for some reason
introduced an only slightly set up and then weakly resolved subplot about
the history of the Greek Island that is as superfluous as it is
underdeveloped. Anthony Van Laast adapted his own choreography which seems
at times clunky and at other awkward. Poor Miss Barnaski is called upon to
do some really poor moves in her big number, "Does Your Mother Know."
One ABBA song that wasn't used in the stage
version of Mamma Mia! has been used in the film. "When All Is Said And Done"
was one of ABBA's last successful releases. It was included in their final
album and it was the final top 40 hit of the group in the United States when
it was released as a single in 1982. |
