Movie Review – Mamma Mia
Gary Pollard (first aired on RTHK Radio 4’s “Morning Call)”)
In the interests of full disclosure, I should begin a review of “Mamma Mia” by admitting that I dislike the music of the Swedish pop group Abba, and consider them the epitome of superficial manufactured pop music. The stage version of “Mamma Mia”, like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” is what’s known as a “jukebox musical”, a genre in which pre-existing songs are strung together by an often tenuous plot.
“Mamma Mia” came about when producer Judy Craymer met Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of Abba in 1983 and suggested a musical based on the group’s songs. Fourteen years later, in 1997, she commissioned Catherine Johnson to write the book for the show, and in 1998, hired Phyllida Lloyd to direct.
The plot they used was based on the 1968 film “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell”, in which three different men were making maintenance payments, all believing themselves to be the father of Mrs Campbell’s daughter. Mrs Campbell, as veteran movie-goers may remember, was played by Gina Lollobrigida.
The stage version of “Mamma Mia” opened almost ten years ago, in 1999. The story, which takes place on a Greek island, is set on the eve of the wedding of Sophie, a 20-year old American girl (played by Amanda Seyfried). She wants her father to walk her down the aisle. The only problem is she has been raised by her single mother Donna (Meryl Streep) who runs a taverna on the island, and has never even told her who father is. When two of Sophie’s friends arrive for her wedding she tells them she has found an old diary of her mother’s in which she described relationships with three men, Sam, Bill and Harry, all around the same time. Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan) is now an architect, Harry Bright (Colin Firth) is now a banker, and Bill Austin (Stellan Skarsgard) is a travel writer. Sophie has invited them all to her wedding, without telling her mother, convinced that as soon as she claps her eyes on them she’ll know which one is her biological father.
At the same time Donna is welcoming her own old friends to the island. One is Tanya (Christine Baranski), a rich woman who has been married and divorced three times. The other is Rosie (Julie Walters) an unmarried cooking writer. The three of them were once a singing trio – Donna and The Dynamoes.
Given much less attention than any of these characters is Sophie’s fiancé Sky (Dominic Cooper) who isn’t all that keen on the idea of a big wedding anyway. It hardly matters what he wants. Maybe because the central creative team behind the production consisted of three women, this is all about the women. Not all musicals are almost by definition chick flicks. This one is. It’s what you might get if you revisit the “Sex and the City” women on a Greek island twenty years later, all designed to be very much a girls’ night out entertainment.
Someone told me many years ago that they had seen the stage musical in London and liked it a lot. Other people have told me since that they enjoyed it. Many had told me that it was a lot better than “We Will Rock You”. I enjoyed Queen’s music. I do not like Abba’s. And yet I have to say, watching this film, I think they have a point. I can see that there’s more originality in the way this story is devised as a link between the songs and dances. And it seems to me the songs potentially work even better, at least most of the time.
As a musical, “Mamma Mia” probably did work well on the stage. The problem is that it is not well adapted into film. If what shines through of the stage musical is enough for you, you’ll probably enjoy the movie anyway. I just think it could all have been done so much better.
For one thing, some twenty minutes to half an hour has been cut out of the running time for the movie. It seems likely that would have included some explanation, which we never get here. Some of the songs, and some of the revelations, don’t make sense because nobody has bothered to set the scene for them. The lyrics of “Winner Takes It All” which Donna sings to Sam just before the wedding don’t make much sense at all given what we know of the characters (add to that the fact that this particular song is quite badly staged here). Two last minute revelations about a couple of the male characters are also all but meaningless. No one has ever set them up.
Stage director Phyllida Law directs the movie, but strangely enough it doesn’t actually look like the director knew much about the stage play. The dance sequences are surprisingly ineptly choreographed. Were they this poor on stage, or did the director have a problem reimagining them for the camera and in real locations. Many of the songs are filmed so clumsily I was reminded more than anything of Joshua Logan’s klutzy film version of “South Pacific”.
And there’s a bigger problem than the filming and staging of the songs, which is that only one person in this entire cast has a good enough voice to have even got an understudy part on stage, and that’s Amanda Seyfried as Sophie. The rest of the solo performances are average to say the least. Pierce Brosnan, much as I like him, sounds as if he’s being strangled. The only time the Abba songs show some of their old energy is when an entire chorus of islanders or villagers is allowed to join in, and the indifferent main singers can get drowned out a bit.
Theoretically, filming on a real Greek island should have brought another advantage to the movie version, but cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos doesn’t seem up to the challenge. Although the island is briefly spectacular in the opening scenes, neither he nor director Phyllida Law do much of a job of capturing the atmosphere. And to make things worse, the courtyard and other parts of the taverna aren’t even filmed on the real location but in a studio, where they are very poorly lit. The cinematography is frankly mediocre, and thinking that if you put too much backlight on your actresses you can convince the audience this is Greek sunlight is a major mistake. The studio sequences stand out terribly.
Overall, “Mamma Mia” was a bit of a strange experience for me. Songs I don’t like were squeezed together into a musical that used them to their best advantage, and – in context- seemed to give them more meaning than they ever had as individual pop songs. Unfortunately the whole package just didn’t reach its full potential as a movie. This is one instance where the adaptation would have been better with unknown actors who could actually sing, and where the stage director should have stepped down in favour of a film director who knew how to make the best use of what cinema had to offer.
Ultimately, I think its indifferent reviews are a sign that “Mamma Mia” had promise it didn’t live up to. If you liked the stage musical, or Abba’s songs themselves, maybe this will do as a memento. For women looking for a “girls’ night out” it may also do. Otherwise, and particularly if you don’t fall in those categories, even more if you’re a male, it really doesn’t have much to offer at all.
