Relentlessly Awful

Rating: 1/10 (22 December 2008)

If this aggressively, sadistically cheerful movie does not make you want to jab a fork into your eye within the first two minutes, then you and I should probably never get together for drinks.
A stage musical based on the songs of ABBA was probably an unnecessary endeavor to begin with, so a movie based on that stage musical is unnecessary to the second power. But was that any reason to inflict a film this terribly made and relentlessly un-entertaining on its audience? Who was director Phyllida Lloyd trying to punish anyway?
"Mamma Mia!" the movie! retains a single monotonous! tone of mania! that I think is supposed to be wacky but instead comes across as deranged. I didn't think I could be embarrassed by a Meryl Streep performance, but this movie proves that there's a first time for everything. Streep mugs and writhes and jumps up and down on beds and emotes to pointless songs shoe-horned into a vapid plot to the point where I just wanted someone (the grip, the script supervisor, anyone) to shoot her and put her out of her misery. But the misery inflicted by Streep's performance is nothing compared to the misery endured having to listen to Pierce Brosnan sing ABBA songs in the style of Bruce Springsteen. Wonderful actresses like Julie Walters and Christine Baranski are asked to behave like fifteen-year-old girls (which is the only demographic I can even come close to seeing this film appeal to, by the way). Other nightmarish images flash across my eyes when I think back on this movie, like a phalanx of male dancers wearing scuba flippers and a fleeting glimpse of Stelan Skarsgaard's naked ass. Everyone looks like they're having a good time, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing so at gunpoint.
What's next, a musical based on television commercial jingles?
Grade: F