I am not going to sit here and tell you that “Mamma Mia!” can be justified as a work of cinema, or that there weren’t moments in it that made me cringe. This is, after all, a musical based on ABBA songs, with a plotline that would have been rejected by a screwball comedy writing class.
But sometimes silliness is its own justification, and “Mamma Mia!” is giddily, happily ludicrous. Its plotline, fitted to a bunch of hits by Sweden’s foremost pop band, couldn’t be a fluffier excuse for eye candy.
The story, according to the press notes, is set in 1999 (I wish I’d known that, since I spent too much time puzzling out the timeline of events). We’re on a Greek island, where free-spirited Donna (Meryl Streep) has owned a cute little hotel for 20 years.
Her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married. Never having known the identity of her father, and having recently discovered her mother’s ’70s diary, Sophie has invited the three men who could potentially be Daddy to the wedding.
They don’t know the reason, but they all show up: responsible businessman Sam (Pierce Brosnan), fussy banker Harry (Colin Firth), and adventurous author Bill (Stellan Skarsgard).
Twenty years earlier, Donna, ah, “dated” them all, and she’s a little alarmed to see the boys again. But she has her loyal friends Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski) to share the bewilderment.
If this were played straight, it would be stupid and borderline offensive. But people burst out in song and dance, and that makes all the difference.
The early reels are wobbly, with an excess of the kind of forced, giggly girl-bonding that I hope only happens in movies. Most of the outdoor sequences are on a soundstage with a digitally-added Mediterranean behind them, which gives a weird blankness to certain scenes … but none of this carping matters. Audiences are going to go bonkers for this movie, just as the preview audience I saw it with did.
When Pierce Brosnan plants himself in front of Meryl Streep and starts belting out “SOS,” the audience was almost beside itself — at Brosnan’s limited vocal skills, at his utter commitment to the moment anyway, and at the mind-blowing fact that here was James Bond singing an ABBA song. I don’t know the last time I’ve felt waves of pleasure pass through a movie audience like that.
Unless it was a few minutes earlier, during a zany production number for “Dancing Queen.” But even curmudgeons would have to admit that “Dancing Queen” is one of the great pop songs.
The cast is in the goofy spirit of the thing, although the younger performers are bland. Expert troupers such as Walters and Baranski are not going to miss their chances, and they don’t; the latter has a career moment in her beachside rendition of “Does Your Mother Know.”
But there is one thing that keeps this film (directed and written by Phyllida Lloyd and Catherine Johnson, respectively, who also brought the musical to the stage) on track. That’s Meryl Streep. She’s been a Great Actress for so long, people might forget what a good sport she is — I think there must be a rule that the best actors are the ones most willing to make fools of themselves. I mean that in the best sense.
Always a talented singer (remember “Postcards from the Edge”?), Streep completely throws herself into the mad romping required by this movie. And yet she somehow keeps it all grounded — to whatever extent it needs to be.
Final note: Don’t leave before the end credits. You might miss your “Waterloo.”
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