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 Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Mamma mia, here we go again: another day, another musical. Forcing the round pegs of ABBA songs into a square-hole story about yearning on a Greek island, Mamma Mia! has crowd-pleaser written all over it – from the plaintive opener ‘I Have A Dream’ to show-stoppers like ‘Dancing Queen’. Right?
Well… Sophia is getting married and invites three men, one of whom might be her father, to the wedding – her mother is suitably horrified. They provide the action, ABBA provides the music, Greeks provide the chorus. Bringing her stage production to screen, Lloyd’s first feature is a cluttered, clunky affair that endlessly competes with its location.
Curious technical and casting choices compounded by two groups of screeching women make for a needlessly shrill production, aurally and visually. There’s also a dispiriting sense that everyone is pushing the movie uphill – big numbers are not so big, quiet numbers are not so quiet. Even a sure-fire chorus line of spunky boys dancing in flippers somehow fails to ignite.
There are occasional moments: Christine Baranski energises ‘Does Your Mother Know’ while Julie Walters fires up her panto-shtick with ‘Take A Chance On Me’. But occasional moments can’t save a film so in love with the background it fails to see what’s happening in the foreground.
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