The movie: Mama Mia!

[wolfman]

I heard that this was a big hit on Broadway and knew that they made a movie of it last year. So last night I see it is playing on HBO and I decided to take a look. Holy crap. Who told Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep that they could sing. I think that most people on this board can sing better than they can. They were horrible. Did they purposely make a bad movie for some reason?

 

[Texanne]

I thougth that movie was brutal. But oddly enough, I wasn't really bothered by Pierce Brosnan's singing, even though it was god-awful. I didn't expect him to be a vocalist.

The whole thing was just ridiculous. It stunk. Out loud. I cannot understand why people liked it. And I'm a woman.

And shouldn't it have been set it Sweden??? I mean, it was ABBA, after all ...

Their only song I really ever liked was Waterloo. Thank God they couldn't figure out a way to weave it into the plot.

 

[RomaVicta]

Dancing Queen is one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

 

[Chest Rockwell]

While channel-surfing I came across this train-wreck and rubber-necked for ~5 minutes. I had my suspicions about how bad this movie was, but nothing really prepares you for it. I immediately put in a DVD of Blues Brothers just to try to regain some of my manhood.

Okay, I was just kidding on popping in the Blues Brothers DVD, but when else am I going to get a chance to use that emoticon??

 

[Crockett]

I am a man and qualify as pretty much a full-fledged redneck to hear my wife tell it. That said, this movie is harmless fun, except Pierce Brosnan singing, which migh violate the Genva Convention.
If we require logic and reality, the whole damn genre of musical romantic comedy is out the window. Meryl is not a singer, but my tin ears were not offended. Hey she's just a little older than me and still cuter than most of the girls wiith whom I could ever get a date 20 years ago.

 

[FAST FRED]

Here's the review I posted:



Saw "Mamma Mia!" with my sweet wife and lovely daughter; we each enjoyed it and I recommend it to people who think they might like it, appreciate musical comedy and who are easy to entertain.

My musical favorites alphabetically range from Aerosmith to ZZ Top, but I've never been partial to the songs of ABBA.

I guess "Dancing Queen" is my favorite and it's featured twice in this cinematic offering.

This movie featuring their pop songs, mostly with a familiarly heavy dance beat with one or two notable exceptions, certainly didn't transform me into a big ABBA fan, but I though it was a whole lot of fun to watch.

I never paid enough attention to ABBA's lyrics to understand exactly what their songs were about, so if these movie makers wanted to make those songs fit into this story that worked OK for me.

Having enjoyed the moody, violent fantasy of "The Dark Knight," as did I, I found the mostly happy, actually mosty silly, fantasy in "Momma Mia!" to be a complete opposite and think each is good movie for the right audience.

If you like musical movie entertainment, you'll probably appreciate this flick and I highly recommend it to those folks.

If you don't, I strongly advise you watch something else......as if you didn't already know that.

I really enjoy watching talented people perform and here Meryl Streep obviously has an absolute ball singing, dancing, emoting and doing physical comedy alongside the other members in this stellar emsemble cast.

I thought the colorful costumes, the tongue-in-cheek choreography and the musical performances were really fun to see.

Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski are excellent musical comedy performers and the rest of the cast was good too.

Pierce Brosnan isn't anywhere close to being as good at singing and dancing as Christopher Walken was in "Hairspray," but he is a trouper and was a good foil for the talents of the others.

I thought Brosnan fit in here better than he ever did as James Bond.

For me, comparable recent movies include "A Prairie Home Companion" also featuring Streep, "The Banger Sisters" with Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon and "Hairspray."

I liked these flicks for their entertainment value and recommend all of them to anyone who liked any one of them.

"Mamma Mia!" has the vibe and musicality of "Grease," is actually set in Greece, has much more dancing than "Zorba the Greek" and as much excitement, although of a completely different kind, as "The Guns of Navarone," which also was set in Greece.

This movie is fast paced, funny and even exhilarating, if you appreciate stage and movie musical comedy entertainment.

But, it will be a slow paced, painful, even suffocating experience, if you don't.

Men. if you go, then taking a chick or even two as I did, might make it much better, depending on the chicks.

It's a sappy, sentimental, slapstick, silly musical comedy and those who should stay away should already know who they are.

But, if you enjoy escapist, mostly mindless, fantasy with some satire, as the preview clearly promises, you might find it entertaining.

Musical comedy on Broadway or at the movies is supposed to have hummable songs and should make you laugh or at least smile.

This genre need only contain only enough reality to allow a viewer to relate and just enough sadness to set up a happy ending.

Performers, such as Marlon Brando, Jerry Orbach, Rex Harrison, John Travolta, Alfred Molina, Rod Stieger, Richard Gere, Bob Hope, Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Natalie Wood, Carol Burnett, Renee Zellwiger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer, Martha Raye, Bea Arthur, Carol Channing, Phyllis Diller and Betty Grable, who aren't necessarily singers or dancers are often featured in musical comedy both on stage or screen.

 

[OrangeBlooded]

mamma mia sounds either fun to watch or just flat out terrible. i'm suprised that ppl that think the latter would still watch it.

 

[Hornius Emeritus]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[darius]

I saw the Broadway production, and it was truly fantatsic.

The movie was a big disappointment. Streep and Brosnan were not good selections for their two roles. For one thing, they were way too old for their roles. Streep is 60 and Brosnan is 56, yet they played reunited parents of a 20 year old daughter that they had when they were young and foolish. Their age (and singing) bothered me throughout the movie.

 

[RomaVicta]

H.E.,

I'm intrigued.

For me, Dancing Queen seems to perfectly embody what it must be like to be a beautiful teenage girl or, more accurately, how a teenage girl dreams of being the beautiful girl at the dance who has her choice of boys and wants only to dance.

Ironically, the song grabbed me during my West Texas oilfield roughneck year. I was in my prime as a big, physical man. We'd go to a bar in Carlsbad Tx sometimes after leaving the rig. I'd play that in the jukebox usually with Waylon's "Wurlitzer Prize" and Asleep at the Wheel's "Miles of Texas."

Sitting there in my black tee shirt, jeans, still a little grimy from the job I was transported to the light footed, graceful, simple dream. Maybe part of the charm was the breadth of the leap from who I was to what the song was.

I've never put these thoughts to word before. Thank goodness for the anonymous internet.

Neil Diamond is my second guiltiest pleasure, but I'll save that muse for another day.

In the movie, Mama Mia, which I saw with my girlfriend (of many years! I'm a man. I'm over forty! I'm fat, too!) I thought they captured the spirit of the song pretty well. The overall movie was an airy pleasure, no weightier than an Abba song.

Most of the songs were not familiar to me, but I thought there was something charming about Brosnan choosing to take that role and sing. I have met him a few times (he contacts me for beauty tips

) and it made me smile to think of the roles he has chosen now that he can say yes to anything he wants to. He's done some fun things since raking in the 007 money.

But I ramble.

 

[YoLaDu]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[RomaVicta]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[YoLaDu]

In reply to:

---

---

 

[RomaVicta]

 

[Third Coast]

I thought Amanda Seyfried was rather good in her exuberant role and not a bad singer either.

 

[OldHippie]

I tuned it in last week while staying in a hotel for lack of anything better to do and hoping for an evening's entertainment. I was interested after seeing this thread. I lasted half way through the first song. And I can usually do chick flicks.

 

[hooklahoma]

That movie..........an abortion, it was.