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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Is what kind of skank has three possible fathers for a single child?
This movie can't possibly not suck.
No only will I not go to see this in the theater, but will refuse to watch it on cable or regular broadcast TV (which will occur uncomfortably soon.
I can only add that several weeks ago, when my son took his 8 year old niece, my granddaughter, to the latest Indian Jones movie, they showed the trailer for "Mamma Mia!", which caused Zara to proclaim that she absolutely HAD to see it. Uncle Marc quickly quashed that, as well he should have.
The Village People's one and only theatrical film. A film in which nobody comments on the concept that every member of the VP is an obviously gay stereotype. Where the VP are supposed to bring "magic" to everyone around them. Disney barely managed to do this, as farce, in Enchanted. And none of the songs in that film were as crappy as the music of ABBA.
Whoever approved this project deserves to be impeached right after Bush.
But you're just being mean.
...so Stephanie's review ain't no surprise here. Geez, does everyone from peasant to hotel owner on this island wear festive outfits 24/7 and walk around ready to throw confetti and flowers at the drop of a hat? If a musical features a cast ready to break into joyous song and dance every minute, that's never a good sign--especially if they aren't giving you much talent or good numbers to look at.
It would make a Bazillion bucks. Next time I would advise the director to cast Batman with a large part in the production.
As I live in the UK, where it opened last week. And Stephanie is probably right about its objective merits.
That said, however, it was the most fun I've had at the movies in a long, long time. People were dancing in the aisles at the end. Could it have been better? Probably. But it was the first time in a long time I've left a cinema feeling happier about life than when I went in.
Isn't "a cast ready to break into joyous song and dance every minute" the very definition of a musical? And as for talent, Streep, Walters, Baranski and Firth are fantastic, and the young Seyfried isn't half bad either.
This is supposed to be a FUN movie, not "Sophie's Choice 2", so everybody please lighten up. I found it utterly enjoyable, and so did most of the other viewers at the screening I attended (everybody stayed through the credits to watch the encore performances). I, for one, am glad that Streep & Co. didn't take themselves too seriously to make this movie.
I couldn't agree more with this review — except Brosnan gets a little more slack than he deserves. Yes, he's become a better actor since Bond, but not necessarily a more discerning one. He certainly could've done better than this.
I don't know what I like more about Stephenie's reviews, that they're honest and actually get to the heart of the matter or that the comments go on for so long about how much she obviously hates films. Someone who hates film wouldn't be so passionately moved when presented with a crappy film, surely. What I see is outrage that yet another filmic insult is being shoved onto the public, which would suggest a caring about films which people who line up to see Mamma Mia — or defend it — might not appreciate.
Steve
that the prevailing attitude on this board is that Stephanie has a kneejerk reaction of hating everything.
It seems obvious to me that everyone here has a kneejerk reaction of disagreeing with her.
After all, have you see the previews for "Mamma Mia?" I certainly have and I find it very easy to believe that it takes a rather cloying approach toward being entertaining, the plot is thin and they overuse shots of sunlight on the water.
Is it really so hard to believe that this movie isn't that good?
Not for me.
Stephanie,
Is "Mama Mia" really "bad" directing, or simply directing in the wrong media?
The film director also directed the stage musical version of "Mama Mia," which plays in 2000 seat theatres. Live theatre, particularly live musical theatre in cavernous venues, requires big gestures and broad acting, so that the gestures and emotions can be communicated to the back row. What requires "jazz hands" in a musical might be communicated with a lifted eyebrow in a close-up movie frame.
While there have been successful musical- to-movie adaptations, it's a trickier feat than one would expect. (Stephen Sondheim, for example thinks "West Side Story" doesn't work on film, because guys dancing in the "real" NY streets on film looks foofy, while guys dancing on stage before a live audience looks menacing).
"Mama Mia" as a stage musical is campier than to begin with, and relies on the audience reaction to keep the whole thing energized and fun. Maybe part of "Mama Mia's" problem is that the director didn't know how to finesse the translation from stage to screen. (To see how *that's* done well, watch Tim Burton's incredible film adaptation of "Sweeney Todd").
Still, I'm gonna go see it. (As I told my husband; "I've sen enough car chases, explosions, knock-out battles, and movies with "Man" in the title for the summer. Bring on the dancing gay chorus!)
Critics always run the risk of being tiny voices in a storm, and any negative review of "Mama Mia!" will be such. I say this only because the play got rotten reviews, got re-done, and still got mixed reviews, and yet it was a hit. The commercials are already running with quotes from "critics" about how much "fun!" this film is. This is unsurprising, because the play did the same: it advertised heavily as a fun and safe and tourist-quenching product to buy tickets to in New York. The play was a hit, because it promised to be a Fun-Sized candy bar for people who hadn't been to the theater.
When the movie version of the stage version of the movie "Hairspray" actually got good reviews, it made little difference, except to supply the vocabulary of the exit interviews, and a bad review of "Mama Mia!" will not do much. However, word of mouth (second week tickets) will show. Tourists in New York aren't coming back to the theater the next week, won't tell their friends to go see "Proof" instead, but movie goers are different.
Still, this is a hit because it was a hit by design, and, while it will get terrible marks on IMDB and Netflix in a few months, all those tickets will have been sold, and all those DVD's will have shipped, and those foreign markets will have been sucked into the vaccuum of planned entertainment all the same.
I don't have to hate ABBA to hate this film: it's enough to hate studios telling me that they have 92 minutes of emotional manipulation and market surveys for me to watch.
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219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
