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Mamma Mia!

(2008)

109 min. Universal Pictures Distribution. Director: Phyllida Lloyd. Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard.

Hollywood seems to be getting savvier by ther week in its counterprogramming. Against the serious, heavy, testosterone-drenched juggernaut of The Dark Knight, we get the female-driven, gaily attired musical comedy Mamma Mia!, a probable inheritor of feminine blockbuster Sex in the City's box-office success. Probably the most successful of the jukebox musicals, the ABBA showcase Mamma Mia! comes to the screen with its energy and color fully intact. It's a wedding farce, a romantic fantasy, and a musical orgy that literally bursts open by it's well-made ending.

Amanda Seyfried plays Sophie, a twenty-year-old woman on the verge of her wedding day. She was raised by her single mother Donna (Meryl Streep), but Sophie has discovered that her father is one of three men—not knowing which, she invites all three to her wedding, causing romantic chaos to ensue. Streep gets a sexy, funny showcase that ranges from bubbly pop ("Chiquitita") to light aria (an epically rendered "The Winner Takes It All"), and Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgard are very funny as the possible fathers. Yes, they all sing. So do Julie Walters and Christine Baranski as Streep's best buds.

Mamma Mia! is complete fluff, and proud of it. The characters are broadly drawn, including Streep's hotel proprietor, who sublimates her disused sex drive into the crumbling resort's repairs (of sex, she unconvincingly says, "I don't miss it, at all" whilst wielding a battery-powered drill). Donna's former position in girl group The Dynamos, along with Baranski's Tanya and Walters' Rosie, excuses a number of the film's twenty songs, but the play repurposes the lyrics cleverly enough as opportunities for the characters to emote over their romantic travails or simply express joie de vivre. The film's undeniable musical peak is "Dancing Queen," a thoroughly bubblegum hit that somewhat improbably becomes a feminist anthem here as Donna feels 17 again, the whole company boogies, and a nearby farmer woman throws off her yoke. (This one got a spontaneous applause break from the preview audience, perhaps prefigured by an ABBA cameo.)

At first, the acting in Mamma Mia!--particularly that of serial-overactor Walters--seems obnoxiously amplified, at least for the estrogen-impaired (the screeching female bonding at the film's outset is well-nigh unbearable). Once you adjust your senses, however, you're bound to submit to this vacation of a movie strategically set on an oversexed Greek isle, complete with theatrical redefinition of the Greek chorus. Though the dance numbers feel a bit clunky, those songs are sinfully catchy, despite one's best efforts of denial. Director Phyllida Lloyd, a leading stage director known for her work in opera, keeps her eye on the primary goal: to deliver on that "Dancing Queen" lyric "having the time of your life."