15 July 2008

Holy Mamma! Meryl Streep headbangs!

Aimless, absent-minded-ly simple, yet subtly charming: Mamma Mia!, which now also translates to, Holy Cow, Meryl Streep Is A Headbanger. And Pierce Brosnan is one hot lip-synching piece of ass, hot being the operative word—except when he pranced around in the encore in the trademark Abba catsuit. Now that was OFF. On the other hand, the film generally served a good purpose of showing the world how the ever-omnipotent Hollywood actors can also make complete clowns of themselves and still mine gold. And that's a compliment for my granny Meryl: Silly antics, superb acting, lotsa money. Not one shy moment. Amanda Seyfried was also swell, both in the singing and acting-out-a-bimbette categories. I haven't seen the stage version but I'm betting the simplicity of the screenplay aimed to keep the musical's original execution.

Which made the film appear somewhat lost. After Streep's acrobatics in the Mamma Mia and Dancing Queen numbers in the first half, the story began spinning in all directions and the effort to rope it all together in the last 10 minutes was pretty obvious. And again, a little more creativity could have salvaged most of the single-shot performances. It was a musical tribute, and the songs needed to be performed, I know, but it should never be at the expense of the audience's yawns. Glancing back at The Producers: more humor would have been nice too for MM. Luckily in the end the film conveniently used the human emotion trump card and smoothly closed the curtains without leaving the audience—or at least the ladies—scratching their heads, let alone disappointed.

Seyfried played Sophia, a young bride-to-be who wanted to meet her biological father before she ties the knot, and who subsequently invited her mom (Streep)'s exes over, played by Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard a day before the wedding in hopes of pinning down the truth—for everyone's sakes. The movie went on versing and discoing among the characters' positions in the plot, ultimately chorusing in an unexpected ending. Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper and Christine Baranski also starred.
QWERTY-ed by Paoper at 23:23 |  
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