Mamma Mia is a song from a legendary Swedish pop group in late 1970’s called ABBA. In 1999, a musical play inspired by the songs from ABBA was made under the song’s title. The songs in the play are completely taken from ABBA’s songs and chained up to form its story. Later in 2008, a Hollywood adaptation movie of the musical was made and hit the big screen. Some critics might have given bad reviews on the movie, but the fact was that audiences kept on flocking the movie theaters to watch the singing and dancing from Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, and Pierce Brosnan.
The story of Mamma Mia takes place in a Greek Island and is as simple as this. A single mother, Donna, is preparing her daughter’s wedding, Sophie. Even though Donna has done her best to make the wedding beautiful and memorable, Sophie still feels that her wedding will not be complete without the presence of her father. She then takes her mother’s old diary and finds that there are three men who have the biggest possibilities to be her father. They are Sam – a New York based architect, Bill – a Swedish adventurer, and Harry – a banker. Secretly, she invites these three men to come to her wedding.
Several misunderstandings happen when the three men arrive, creating some commotions before the wedding. However, through these incidents Donna is finding her old-forgotten love back and resulting in a very sweet romance. Donna and her future husband also find reinforcement in their love and wed with the bigger feeling of love.
The two leading roles are played by Meryl Streep as Donna and Amanda Seyfried as Sophie. The three possible fathers are played by Pierce Brosnan as Sam, Stellan Skarsgard as Bill, and British actor Colin Firth as Harry. The quality of the singings in this movie is not too bad even though the songs by Pierce Brosnan are intolerable. This average quality can be covered by the energetic and expressive dancings from the whole cast. The setting which was taken in an exotic Greek island also becomes the eye candy for the viewers.
However, most people agree that the musical play is still much better than the movie. The director seems to fail to transfer the greatness of the musical play to the big screen. The movie is okay for those who haven’t seen the play, but I think it will disappoint those who are big fans of the musical play.