Relentlessly Cheerful, Cloying, and Cutsie-poo

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2008)

If you can get diabetes from a movie this one's it.
I have nothing against cheerful movies, but this one starts out with a smile so broad you'd think it had a coat hanger in its mouth - and it never lets up.
It wasn't helped by all the performances being over-the-top. Here you have a cast of excellent actors noted for their abilities to create subtle, believable, characters and they are all chewing the scenery like an army of Tasmanian Devils. Even Christine Baranski, who has turned over-the-top characters into an art form, is notched up too high. When a talented group of people like this all overact, you know it has to be the result of the director.
The staging of the dance numbers was an odd combination of boring and bizarre. There were some little bits that were clever, but all the while the cast seemed to have annoying "see how clever we are" expressions on their faces. The resulting effect was as if you were watching a movie acted and choreographed for live theater, where sitting in an audience seated in front of a stage, it would look fine. But staring at it photographed and blown up to twenty feet high gave it a kind of horrific intensity.
I will say that the singing was not as bad as I had heard. Meryl Streep was fine, even Pierce Brosnan was good at times. (But don't give up your day job.)
The one note cheerfulness made the 108 minute running time seem very long. The actors enjoyed what they were doing so much, I didn't have to. Perhaps if they had dialed it down to a more realistic level I could have gotten involved with them. After all, I believed John Travolta in a fat suit.
At the end, right before the credits, there is a reprieve of "Dancing Queen." When the song is over Meryl Streep turns straight to the audience and says, "Do you want more?" My friends and I looked at each other and said quietly, "Noooooooooo!"