Let the good times roll

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2008)

After slightly more than a month since it's being released here, I finally get to watch it over the weekend at the cinema. I will always remember the original musical version for all the happy reasons - it was because of Mamma Mia! I went to the theatre for the first time in my life.
Though it was four years ago when I watched the original musical when it arrived here. Having a father whom count ABBA as one of his favourite music groups in his teenage years, I began to like their songs as well. He did watched the original musical production when he was in London for work four years ago and it brought back all those past schooling days for him. And I have to say I didn't regret watching the musical production when it came here. Now anyone will wonder why someone who had only just been in her early stages of adulthood be liking a film which is based on songs coming out before way she was born. But then I actually grew up listening to songs from my parents' time, apart from listening to what is on the radio these days.
To the review proper. Growing up, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) had always lived with her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) on the small Greek island of Kalokairi where her mother runs a hotel. Sophie is going to get married to Sky (Dominic Cooper) and she wants her father to give her away on her wedding day. But the problem is, she doesn't know who he is and how he looks like. It was after she read her mother's diary from 20 years ago, she realised there are three possibilities. Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), Harry Bright (Colin Firth), or Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgård). The three men who had once entered her mother's life.
The three arrived at the island, thinking it was their old flame Donna who had invited them. Sophie hides them upstairs in the old goat house, before revealing it was her who wrote the invitation. At the same time, other guests have arrived for the wedding and it even included Donna's friends: single writer Rosie (Julie Walters) and rich three-time divorcée Tanya (Christine Baranski).
For many years, the hotel has been run down and while Donna was making repairs, there was a tremor and the dolphin mosaic in the courtyard floor splited. It was when she was searching for supplies, she heard noises coming from the old goat house after peering into the window, she realised the three men whom she used to date in her younger days had arrived. That was the beginning of what was to come. Donna confronting with her past, Sophie trying to find out who is her father.
It's definitely a fluffy kind of film. Adapted from the original musical production, based on the hits of Swedish group ABBA, being brought to life to the screen. A young woman, searching for who is her father, searching for her past. A film which makes you want to know who is Sophie's father given after all, he only revealed himself towards the end of the film. And there is even a twist to the ending as well.
Whatever I remembered back when I watched the original musical version, the important scenes were there. Though I actually know because of the time constraints, not all the scenes from the musical fit into the film. Of course I'm happy when my favourite scenes from the musical were being brought to the screen. Like when Donna was singing 'Money, Money, Money' when she was making repairs to the hotel, Donna and the Dynamos (the group she together with Rosie and Tanya formed in their younger days) in their 80s outfit, Tanya rejecting the playful advances of Pepper and some of Sky's other friends in 'Does Your Mother Know', when Donna sang 'The Winner Takes It All' to Sam.
One thing did amazed me. Pierce Brosnan (who is Sam in the film) can really sing.
If you like musicals and/or like ABBA, then Mamma Mia! is for you. For me, it's a case of both. My younger sister, whom I will never associate with listening to songs which came out way before she was born, had actually said after watching the film that she wants to see it again. That is just the impact of Mamma Mia!.