First Hit: It was fun and you could tell the actors had fun making it.
I’m not a musical fan, however a friend asked me to go see Mamma Mia and I said "yes".
I saw the play many years ago in London and was amused that ABBA songs were gathered together and made into a play, therefore I had some idea about what I was going to see.
In the film Meryl Streep plays the mom (Donna) who is just barely making it running a beaten down hotel on a Greek island. Her daughter Sophie (played by Amanda Seyfried) is getting married and wants to know who her father is. She finds her mother’s diary and discovers it could be any one of three men and therefore invites them to the wedding without her mother’s knowledge.
The three men are Sam (played by Pierce Brosnan), Bill (played by Stellan Skarsgard), and Harry (played by Colin Firth). Supporting Donna in this quest to put on the wedding are her two friends Tanya (played by Christine Baranski) and Julie (played by Julie Walters).
The overall premise is; can Sophie figure out who her father is prior to the wedding.
As musicals go, I liked many of the ABBA songs when they first came out and I still like some of them today. However, some seem a bit out of place like "Winner Takes it All" because I couldn’t figure out who was the winner. Was Donna singing about herself or Sam (or somebody else ???)? Although many of the actors can sing (especially Steep and Baranski), Bronson gives it a go and, despite his full on efforts, his singing is difficult to listen to. Lastly, it needs to be pointed out, from a chronological point of view, things didn’t quite add up (how can we be in today’s time while Sophie was a mid-early hippy baby and playing a early 20 year old).
Overall: The film was really fun (ABBA songs can be fun) because the actors had fun, but from a film and story point of view, one has to suspend making it work.