Abba is the Greatest Band in the Entire Universe, Ever

What I liked the most about "Mamma Mia" is its deft characterizations and the way in which the score draws from a wide palette of emotions to evoke a subtext for each scene....Ha ha, just kidding. The plot is transparent, character development is pretty much nonexistent and the movie is all about the singing and dancing. Which is what's so great about it.

"Mamma Mia," based on the stage play of the same name, is basically a giant revue of Abba songs. The plot centers around Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who is getting married at her mother's hole-in-the-wall hotel on a Greek island. The problem: she wants to be given away by her father, but she doesn't know who her father is. It turns out she was conceived in a one-night stand sometime in the swinging days of 1988 (hey, I'm only following the movie's chronology) and there are no less than three possible fathers: Stellan Starsgard, Pierce Brosnan, and Harry Firth. Undaunted, Sophie invites all three to the wedding. Hilarity ensues, and so does music, as the characters sing (and generally also dance) an Abba number in each scene.

The musical numbers were all good, and several were great. Meryl Streep (as Sophie's mom Donna) writhing in sexual frustration on a rooftop while singing "Mamma Mia" is hilarious. So is the sight of a singing, dancing chorus of men clad in swimsuits and flippers. Some of the actors, ahem, sing better than others, and some of the dance numbers were more crisply performed than others, but nobody seemed to mind, on the screen or in the theatre. The acting is exactly what the movie needed: hammy, with a lot of slapstick.

The best aspect of the movie was definitely the chemistry the actors seemed to have with each other. Everybody looked like they were having fun, and Meryl Streep was having the most fun of them all. So even though the plot isn't much and some of the singing and dancing isn't exactly spot-on, I was carried away by the sheer ebullience coming off the screen. It's a bunch of people doing Abba songs. What's not to like?
REVIEW BY JAN DE BAKKER