The most disturbing horror film of 2008: Mamma Mia!

Rating: 3/10 (22 August 2013)

I hated this movie from the first scene. As a trio of young women, lead by Amanda Seyfried's remarkably stupid character, giggled and sang, I felt like I was being bludgeoned by stupid sticks, or smothered in pillows made of idiocy. I should have stopped watching immediately, but like a car accident, I just had to get a closer look.
After further establishing its remarkably moronic plot (a scheme as dumb as that in The Parent Trap; Seyfried's stupidity would make more sense were she 12 years old), the movie introduces a second trio of giggly women, only this time middle-aged, who also run and jump and romp and make funny faces.
There are a lot of issues with this movie, from being a musical beset by a casting process where singing ability was irrelevant (it seems purely accidental that Christine Baranski and Seyfried have decent voices) to having a terrible story, but I think this might have worked, or at least been tolerable, if not for the terrible, terrible direction. While I'm sure the goal was to create something bubbly and fun, the constant running and jumping and dancing and face-making feels frenetic and often borders on hysteria. It is like being seated in a restaurant next to a large group of drunk women laughing and getting drunker.
I made it through about forty minutes, and while, to be fair, nothing was as agonizing as the first 10 minutes, nothing was worth watching.
If you want to have mindless fun, listen to an ABBA album. If you want to be beaten by stupid sticks, this is the movie for you.