Mamma Mia! Film Review

There’s a longstanding tradition in musicals for the songs to be written around the story rather than the other way round: it has to do with small things called plot and character development. Such niceties seem far from the minds of the makers of Mamma Mia!, who look content to shoehorn the songs of ABBA into the wafer-thin story of a young woman who invites three men from her mother’s past, one of whom may be her father, to her wedding on a Greek island. Cue a couple of hours of non-singers belting out the greatest hits of the Swedish funsters in true karaoke fashion. The actors do their very best: Streep is particularly game, even if she is slightly miscast as the kooky, free-spirited mother and, while Brosnan isn’t brilliant, and Firth and Skarsgård have barely a thing to do as the three possible daddies, they can’t exactly be accused of letting the side down, leaving Christine Baranksi to shine the brightest as Streep’s old pal. Remember we’re talking about some all time genuine pop classics here, so it’s not as if we can even blame the music. Instead, Mamma Mia!’s failings lie solely with the uninspired writing and the bland and lifeless direction. What may have worked just fine as a nostalgic stage experience falls utterly flat on film, with Lloyd unable to bring any kind of vision or energy to the proceedings, resulting in a crushing disappointment on almost every front. [Paul Greenwood]