Mamma Mia! (2008) - Review

Oh Mamma Mia... here we go (again).

While I’m unfamiliar with the musical and am not a fan of ABBA by any stretch of the imagination, I thought this could be alright.  I like Amanda Seyfried well enough – her voice sounded lovely in Les Mis.  But this movie... wow.  In a midst of cartoonishly over-the-top acting, terrible songs, and a barely plodding storyling, this movie just drowns under the weight of its awful.

The songs.  Oh God, the songs.  We get the single good song in the movie right at the beginning (Honey Honey) which was kind of nice of the writers, I suppose.  There are a couple of other decent ones like the title track and Dancing Queen, but most of the songs are either complete garbage, or just plain bizarre.  Sometimes both.

The one I remember the most is The Winner Takes It All, which is maybe one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard.  From a jarring chord progression to lyrical gems such as:

The winner takes it all
The loser's standing small
Beside the victory
That's her destiny

Here’s a free tip, songwriters: never use the word “win” in a song.  I don’t know what it is, but it always sounds childish and stupid.  Muse does it a lot.

Besides the songs we have some awful acting.  None of the main cast, they’re all fine, it’s mostly the two friends of Meryl Streep.  I get that they’re comedic relief, but Jesus Christ they act like they’re in a 30s serial.  I just wanted them to die, but maybe I had already been tainted by these torturous songs.

The storyline is pretty standard: woman has three suitors and she’s gotta choose just one.  Hardly the depth of Les Mis or Sweeney Todd, now is it?  It wouldn’t be so bad if we cared about any of the characters, but while most of the cast is alright, nobody elevates the script enough to make you care about anyone.

And that sums up Mamma Mia pretty well: I just didn’t care about any of it (other than when I was being bombarded with godawful music).