Mamma Mia!
Review by Russ Breimeier | posted 7/18/2008
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Musical theater is alive and well—it just suffers from a lack of creativity. Why nowadays, Broadway is adapting movies into musicals, and even more strangely, using the repertoires of pop artists to tell stories. In the last decade, we've seen musicals based on the music of Billy Joel, The Four Seasons, and Queen, to name a few. These all followed the 1999 phenomenon that started it all, Mamma Mia!, inspired by the songs of ABBA.
Actually, the Swedish pop group is no stranger to musical theater. Immediately after ABBA broke up, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (the B's in ABBA and the group's principal songwriters) collaborated with award-winning lyricist Tim Rice to create Chess. The musical did fairly well in the UK but bombed in America. Despite some terrific pop songs (including the 1984 single "One Night in Bangkok"), the story about romance and intrigue amid an international chess tournament was too flimsy.
Meryl Streep as Donna
The same could be said about Mamma Mia! However, despite the threadbare story, it succeeded where Chess failed and became an international hit. Maybe there's something more relatable about a comedy of errors set at a big fat Greek (styled) wedding. Or maybe it's the hefty collection of catchy pop songs that have delighted for 30 years, long past the death of disco. Whatever the reason, director Phyllida Lloyd, writer Catherine Johnson, and producer Judy Craymer found success with a story incorporating beloved favorites like "Dancing Queen" and "Take a Chance on Me."
Naturally, that has led to the inevitable screen adaptation, starring none other than Meryl Streep in the role of Donna, a middle-aged hotel manager at an aging resort on a small Greek island. Her 20-year-old daughter Sophie (Mean Girls' Amanda Seyfried) is about to marry hunky boyfriend Sky (Dominic Cooper). But who will walk Sophie down the aisle on her big day? That's the million-dollar-question, since single mom Donna never revealed the identity of the father from her wild days in the '70s.
Amanda Seyfried's Sophie with her Mamma Mia
Determined to learn the truth, Sophie hatches a plan. She swipes her mother's old diary and narrows her father's identity to three probable suspects: architect Sam (Pierce Brosnan), businessman Harry (Colin Firth), or world traveler Bill (Stellan Skarsgård). Posing as her mother via letter, she invites the three to the wedding, hoping that she will instantly recognize her father on sight. Of course, this being a musical comedy and all, identities are mistaken, conversations are misinterpreted, and somehow, we still conclude with a joyous wedding, even if the events doesn't necessarily play out as expected.
This is actually the sort of fluff that works fairly well in a musical setting—just ask Mozart—and the classics from ABBA remain irresistible pop. The lyrics don't always convey the story well, but still generally give the idea. Plus, the setting is absolutely gorgeous, the cast is generally charming, and there are some funny moments.
Yet Mamma Mia! leaves me sending out an S.O.S., with much of the blame falling to the filmmakers—including the very same women responsible for the stage show. Co-producers Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson enlisted Lloyd for her film directing debut. Along with Johnson and Craymer, Lloyd chose unwisely to take the musical to the next level by building on its camp value, overloading it with silliness, sumptuous visuals, and female fantasies (including much ogling and groping of the male actors throughout).
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