July 24, 2008 - 04:30

By John Foote

Mamma Mia!

Directed by Phyllis Lloyd

In theatres

***

Men will never understand the mother-daughter dynamic. We are not meant to and if we could even begin to grasp it, I sense it would blow our minds. My wife can speak to her mom every day and always have something new to discuss. They can talk for hours on the phone and do a great many things together (which I think is terrific). My dad and I are close, but if we speak twice a week for 10 minutes, we are good.

Mamma Mia! is for mothers and daughters and while it is not really a great film, audiences will enjoy it entirely for the time it is running.

This film has two things going for it from the outset, from pre-production actually, the first being the majestic Meryl Streep, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress who has racked up more nominations for Oscars than any other actor in history with 14, while the second is the hummable, toe-tapping music of ABBA. Is it in vogue for a fan of the music of Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Leonard Cohen to admit he likes the music of ABBA, a wildly popular group from Sweden that had great success in the 70s? I do not know and I do not care.

That said I had no desire to see the stage production which led Tom Hanks to buy the rights to the project and make this film. My wife tells me I am too serious about my entertainment and she may be right. While I enjoyed this movie, it has no chance making my 10 best films of the year because, though I liked it while watching it, I have not given it a second thought since it ended. To me it was like cotton candy, sweet and delicious, yet quickly gone and out of mind.

Obviously casting Streep gives the film immediate weight, and allows the actress to cut loose and have some fun. She is not portraying a tragic woman as she does so well. Many in the business believe her to be not only the greatest actress in film history but perhaps the greatest actor... period.

Having met her and experienced her intelligence, warmth, and humour, I can honestly say I adore her. She is without doubt the greatest screen actress in the history of the cinema, and genuinely funny.

Donna (Streep) runs a hotel on the Greek Island of Kalokairi. She's a former singer who has raised her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) without either of them, it seems, aware of who the girl's father is. When Sophie becomes engaged, she reads her mother's diary and realizes her mother had sex with three men around the time of her conception, meaning any one of them could be her father. Some quick detective work and she mails them invitations to her wedding, believing that once she lays eyes on them she will know who her father is.

The men are Sam (Pierce Brosnan), a successful (of course) New York architect, Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Colin Firth, who portrays a stiff upper-lipped British banker.

Merging the music of ABBA into the story, hearing the lyrics pour out of the mouths of the cast takes some getting used to at first, but very quickly the lush locale, the beauty of the cinematography and the obvious fun the cast appears to be having becomes infectious. Romance is simply in the air. There is a good feeling throughout Mamma Mia! that spills off the screen into the audience that will make this the feel good film of the summer.

Streep is luminous in a fluffy little role that the actress obviously knows is a lark but she gives herself over to it and has a blast. Seyfried does fine work as Sophie, a nice switch for her after the gloomy work she does on TV in the HBO series Big Love. She must have felt like a kid at an actors' workshop being able to work with Streep, Christine Baranski, and Colin Firth.

The actors do as they are required to do... look good and make goo-goo eyes at Streep. Firth is obviously the most talented of them and does fine work, while Brosnan does what he does well which is pose and Skarsgard at least has fun in his role.

Director Lloyd struggles with the medium of film, having obvious difficulty with the musical numbers and some of the performances. There are some sequences that are clumsy and Julia Walters is wildly out of control as one of Streep's close friend. A surer hand at the helm would have made for a stronger film. One of London's top stage directors, Lloyd may not be suited to film, or perhaps was not well suited to this film.

That said, people will be singing in the theatre, and moms and daughters will adore the film because it is, after all, for them.

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