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Mamma Mia!

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: PG-13
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

Mamma Mia! is the first completely unabashed “feel-good” film of this summer. As a film, like many politicians’ messages of this campaign season, it tries to give something to almost everyone. Adapted from the popular Broadway musical, Mamma Mia! interweaves into a simple narrative a dozen or so songs from the pop 1970s Scandinavian rock/disco group ABBA. While it’s middle aged nostalgic fluff for some, with its “in your face” exaltations of the joys of life, it’s a chick-flick, modern fairy tale about a young woman, on the eve of her wedding day, who wants to know who her father is, so she sends wedding invitations to three men who had romantic affairs with her mother in the summer before her birth.

This fun, high spirited tale is set in a romantic Greek island where a single, independent middle aged hotel manager has raised her daughter Sophie never revealing her father’s identity mostly because she herself isn’t sure. Fresh faced television actress Amanda Seyfried stars as Sophia, Dominic Cooper is her handsome groom and Meryl Streep is her eccentric mom Donna.

While musicals are usually far from being very realistic, director Phyllida Lloyd casts mostly non-singers in many of the lead and secondary roles to put over these decades old and highly polished top-40 mega hit songs like: “Dancing Queen”, “Take a Chance on Me,” ”Money, Money, Money” and “SOS”. Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, obvious all non singers, play the three dad-candidates. Julie Walters and Christine Baranski humorously plays Donna’s best friends. While these actors will all appeal to the over 50 crowd in various ways, many may cringe at the sound of Brosnan’s Irish folk singer voice and Streep’s acceptable, but limited vocal abilities.

Musicals attract a special breed of filmgoer, but sometimes the appeal of a completely joyous fairy tale is just the remedy for life’s anxieties, especially as the hoards of others are running to tales of a dark knight.