| Mamma Mia [PG] at the Ultimate Picture Palace: Sun 5th: 3.30pm; Mon 6th: 7.30pm; Tue 7th - Thu 9th: 2.30pm. Mamma Mia [PG] at the Hinksey Park: Sat 18th: 9.15pm, free.. | |
Meryl Streep in film version of the famous musical. |
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I never really even liked ABBA! - too chocolate- boxy for my taste but this film has opened me up to their music. Just loved it! In a world full of depression and rot this is a funny and inspiring thrill! Why are people so mean about Pierce Brosnan - he is GREAT! Don't you love him for showing us that James Bond is a real bloke as well as a smooth professional dish. Very funny, very beautiful and take your family too!
Alison, 05/11/08 The best film I have seen in a long time. I think Pierce Brosnan is great - he deserves an oscar for trying to sing. PAM, 15/09/08 Looking back on our last summer, what’s the film that’s packed-out the multiplexes? Forget The Dark Knight, the box-office smash this year is Mamma Mia, a sunny-side-up musical that’s making lots of money, money, money. And deservedly so. A blockbuster to its toes, it’s a dazzling movie with scintillating scenery, clever choreography and a knowing wit. The name of the game is entertainment and the makers of Mamma Mia teach this summer’s films a cinematic lesson: beautiful and inventive, funny and feelgood, it’s a ‘pop corn’ film of the highest order. Based on the perennially popular songs of Abba, it’s a canny reworking of the stage-show – shot by the show’s director Phyllida Lloyd with the same choreographer and producer. Young Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to be married on the Greek island where she helps run her mother’s hotel. Not knowing her father, she sends invitations to the three men who might be the one – thanks to her mum’s revealing diary. Cleverness is the word: kids, parents and grandparents will happily think the film’s pitched at them. And they’d be right. The casting is also cleverness personified: a fabulous Meryl Streep, curve-balling her career yet again, Julie Walters camping amusingly and a trio of men (Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth) gamely throwing aside their professional pride. And it works. Best of all are the songs, vibrantly re-produced by Abba’s Benny Andersson and sounding better than ever. Streep has a fantastic voice and young Amanda Seyfried gives an amazing performance with a vocal range to match. Critics unfairly gave Brosnan a bruising for his singing – but it’s perfectly okay, ramped up by Benny’s gravelly guitars. Stunning locations, multi-angle shots and funny choreography make for a memorable event. Cinema’s sound and visuals are used to the full. Only toward the end does Lloyd lose it, rushing toward a hastily silly conclusion that struggles to fulfill the upbeat tone of the movie’s better half. Abba’s songs were always pretty much from a woman’s perspective and Mamma Mia is no different. Precociously punning on penis jokes and even oral sex, it’s still a winsome working-out of modern-day fairytale dreams. Recruiting all-age Greek extras for the sublime Dancing Queen sequence was a lovely touch. Streep gives a belting rendition of The Winner Takes It All, beautifully investing it with her acting gravitas. And Lloyd knows how to win the audience back after the squibby finale – camping it up over the credits with our sequined stars singing Waterloo. Does your mother know about this film? She should. Do you feel the summer slipping through your fingers? There’s still time to catch the film that’s banked more than Batman. When all is said and done, Mamma Mia is the star of the year’s summer cinema. Thank you for the music. Glenn Watson, 26/08/08 They say that it’s a wise child that knows its father which must make Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) the smartest kid in town: she’s got three of them. And, since she’s getting hitched, she’s invited them all to her dream wedding on the tiny Greek island where she lives with ex-glam rock singer and failed hotelier mum Donna (Meryl Streep). The dads are arriving today and … er … , Sophie hasn’t quite got round to telling mum yet and ... oh yes … the wedding’s tomorrow. That’s about it plot-wise, but, hey, Shakespeare got away with a lot less. Okay, so it’s rubbish. But what glorious, classy, foot-tapping, sun-soaked, olive-drenched rubbish. The Abba songs are the stars and with Streep, Walters, Brosnan, Frith and a supporting cast of, well, dozens giving it all they’ve got, there’s no doubt about it: Hollywood still knows how to put on a show. So dig out those platforms and that sequined top and boogie on down to what has got to be the best show in town. HB, 15/08/08 Once upon a time there was a group called ABBA who wrote some fluffy pop songs about not very much. Then these songs were made into a fluffy and highly implausible stage show. Next, the stage show was made into a film where some very talented and highly acclaimed actors sang, and danced, and acted their socks off in stunningly beautiful surroundings. And, you know what, it’s really pretty good! Ginny, 25/07/08 This movie is so beautiful to look at, you just want to chuck your job, leap on a plane and get yourself into that brilliant turquoise mediterranean sea as fast as possible. Yes, the plot is perfunctory, the dialogue risible, the spectacle of poor Pierce Brosnan trying valiantly to sing cringe-making, but over-all as a celebration of jolly Abba songs and of holidays on Greek islands and of love both early and late in life, it is a very joyous and life-affirming experience. Anyone who remembers her movie Postcards from the Edge knows that Meryl Streep is actually a very good singer - she is well-matched by her backing singers the ever-effervescent Julie Walters (love the bit on the boat when she bites the top from a proffered bottle of ouzo and starts glugging it down) and the absolutely superb, scene-stealing Christine Baranski (why isn't she in more movies?) teetering over the flower-strewn rocks in her five inch stilettos before happily swapping her sophisticated urban style for 70s spangles and platforms. The young people, in the shape of Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper, are also very beautiful and very engaging. It's warm, it's funny, it will have you tapping your toes and booking flights to Greece - go on, you know you want to. Andrea Hopkins, 21/07/08 I think it's a fantastic experience and the songs do have relevance to the scenes in the film.... listen to the words. A good all round piece of entertainment, best experienced at a cinema with big, big screen and sound. Rachelsx2, 17/07/08 It was fantastic, the best film I have seen in a long time, Meryl Streep was brilliant and Pierce Brosnan deserves an oscar for trying to sing. I havenet laughed so much in a long time. 17/07/08 Boy this film is extremely thin on content. It's essentially a whole number of ABBA songs strung together with a very tenuous storyline... There is more singing than dialogue or acting, and some scenes actually involve three ABBA songs in succession... Don't get me wrong - the music itself is fine, and Meryl Streep does a great job singing, it's just that the times when it does get interesting, the cast crack out a number which totally destroys the pace. It also turns it into a bit of a farce because you then have to sit there listening to the music, which has little relevance to the scene. On top of all that, what ever you've managed to grasp gets thrown out at the end of the movie, which was almost non-sensical - a last ditch effort to cram in as many songs as possible... This film does have it's laughs, however, it's best suited for those who are big fans of ABBA - the fact that there is supposed to be a plot somewhere is merely incidental. Those looking for a cinema experience would be better off looking elsewhere... 3/10 Uplah, 14/07/08 This film is not about the feeble storyline and doesn't pretend to be. It's about celebrating the music of ABBA and having fun! A couple of hours of absolute pure joy is what it is. We didn't stop smiling, chuckling and laughing throughout the entire film. Cheeks were hurting by the end of it. There's no doubt how much the actors enjoyed making this film. Meryl Streep is surprisingly good, but Julie Walters brings out the most belly laughs. It is also so refreshing to see 'macho' actors like Pierce Brosnan belt out "S.O.S" (not very well, but that's not the point either) and dance to Voulez-Vous in a cheesy ABBA fashion. And Colin Firth as the hunk Mr Darcy (of Pride & Prejudice/Bridget Jones) is no more... And yes, do make sure you stay and watch the end credits. Definitely worth it. DD, 11/07/08 The earliest jukebox musical I'm aware of is Singin' in the Rain, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's gold standard for studio system musicals. The rules of the jukebox genre are simple: the narrative is structured around a series of previously composed songs, in that case those by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. The stage smash that really cemented the concept and made it big talk at the water cooler the best part of a decade ago was Mamma Mia!. Built on the hits of Abba, the show has at least very stable foundations and a head start in getting heads bobbing and feet tapping. There is a copy of Abba Gold within 150 metres of you right now, I guarantee it, and not without good reason. Most of these songs are absolutely brilliant. The story of Mamma Mia! exists to link up a selection of Abba tunes. I'd advise you to swallow the plot in one if you can swallow it at all, because the more you chew it over, the more you'll want to spit it out. A young bride-to-be (Amanda Seyfried – Veronica Mars' Lily Kane) invites three of her mother's exes (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard) to her wedding, believing one to be her father and wanting him to give her away, whichever one he is. Mum (Meryl Streep) doesn't know about this plan, but when she finds out, she throws a conniption, some sort of farce ensues and the hits keep on coming. The wedding scene provides a climax but a few redundant codas force in a couple more numbers. This still isn't enough as the film version then winds down with a couple of crowd pleasers alongside the credits and, thankfully, ends proceedings on the highest point. Yes – the highest point of this film is quite literally a few of the cast singing Abba songs in a void, after the plot has already sputtered to a halt. Unfortunately, the success of Mamma Mia! on stage spawned any number of imitators from the sci-fi parable We Will Rock You to the kitchen sink knees up of Our House. "Unfortunately" as many of these shows were lacking any real impetus, but also as some others truly embarrassed Mamma Mia! with their increased levels of ambition and imagination. This latter category is crowned with Julie Taymor's Across the Universe, the ne plus ultra of the form and one of the few best Motion Pictures of all time. Present in Universe, but lacking in Mamma Mia! are a number of crucials: a tight narrative with a sensible interior logic; fresh and enervating arrangements of the song list; a whole raft of endearing and engaging vocal performances; jaw-dropping feats of cinematography, choreography and montage; all the purpose, integrity and ambition that money can't buy. Instead, Mamma Mia! has some nice tunes, an awful studio-built "exterior" that looks like panto time at the Reading Hexagon, a few standout performances (Skarsgard, Streep and, I suppose, Julie Walters though she's just doing her best Julie Waters) and the pretty incredible editing that smooths out some truly lumpy bumps between slabs of inert, off-target coverage. Editor Lesley Walker, take a bow. Incidentally, the script for Across the Universe was by Porridge writers Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais who famously coined the phrase Naff Off. Naff alone, sans Off, predated this - but I promise you, no matter how old or worn out the word is, Naff has never been better applied than to the detriment of Mamma Mia!. It's naff. Naff naff naff. And no, the songs of Abba aren't. Not at all. Brendon Connelly, 02/07/08 |
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