Experience the joy of one of the great movie musicals ever!

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2015)

OK, I have to start off by saying that if the wedding took place at the far end of the island and you had to walk to get there from where Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan had their confrontation, I think they'd still be walking, 'cause down the hill, up the hill, and it ain't as close as it looks. But that is minor, because the music of Abba and the gorgeous Greek scenery is what makes this movie so special. Not much has changed in the movie from its stage origins with the exception of the fact that film opens the story up to be so much larger, so much more gorgeous. It's a simple story, basically the same plot line as "Buona Sera Mrs Campbell" with songs (already having been musicalized as the short-lived "Sarava") with a young girl inviting three men to her wedding with the assumption that one of them is her father. Meryl Streep, her hard-working mother, left a diary behind that gave the bride to be (Amanda Seyfried) the clues to pop's possible identity.
Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, total opposites if there ever were total opposites, are Streep's two long-time best friends. While Baranski's character seems to be a duplicate of her "Cybil" sidekick character Mary Anne, she makes her much more well rounded, giving a compassion, zest for life and even a bigger lust for young men, flirting "innocently" with the groom's sexy black pal (Philip Michael) who is obviously a cougar chaser. Walters is hysterically funny as a best selling cookbook author who gets her chance to shine by chasing after one of the possible three dads (Stellan Skarsgård) in the delightfully witty version of "Take a Chance on Me". Streep, who has already established herself as the biggest living legend in film's today, had already sung on screen ("Postcards From the Edge", "Death Becomes Her") and this seems to have led her into becoming the first choice for movie versions of hit Broadway musicals. (Up next possibly, "Follies" I hear...)
Of course, there's a lot of people who admitted to laughing every time that Pierce Brosnan attempted to sing, but do you expect James Bond to sing like Howard Keel? Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård do better with their singing parts, while the younger actors are obviously trained as singers. It seems like every time you blink, somebody is breaking into an Abba song, and while some of the songs seem sort of forced into the plot, for the most part it works. There are also moments when the music becomes so passionate that pure joy takes over and this literally explodes on screen when the weakened structure of Streep's gorgeous inn explodes with a watery fountain from the sea beneath. It's ironic that the biggest hit musicals of Broaday shows are the light-hearted comedies, and "Mamma Mia!" deserves its place as one of the best of the past 20 years.