BlissAndConversation.com

PIERCE BROSNAN AND MERYL STREEP

          As someone who used to think Abba was an English stove (confusing it with Aga), I came to this musical and subsequent movie like a virgin.  The musical was a lot of ebullient joyful hopping up and down and the movie is much the same, though half an hour too long.  Even marvelous Meryl Streep as Donna couldn’t make sense out of  “The Winner Takes All” and Pierce Brosnan’s subsequent lugubrious solo at the wedding feast was equally tiresome.  “Mamma”’s mandate to include every note Abba wrote must shoulder the blame here.

          Who wouldn’t want to go to a wedding on a gorgous Greek island with a tinsel wrap-around story of a bride who has invited three men suspected of being her father?  The distaff side is represented by Donna and the Dynamos, a ‘70s rock group.  What-if is all we know of plot and all we need to know.

          The choreography works best with a long line of boys on a quay stretching out into the sea in poses taken from the friezes on Greek pottery.  The best song is still “Dancing Queen”, seconded by the humble charming “Thank You For The Music”. 

          Amanda Seyfried is a real find as the young bride Sophia, part bubbly teen-ager, part yearning fatherless child, with the best voice in the film.  Her groom is Dominic Cooper, the most gorgeous boy from “The History Boys”.  Colin Firth is touching as Harry Bright and Stellan Skarsgaard as credible as anybody can be in a creampuff like this as the third potential Dad, adventurer and author Bill.  As the Dynamos. Julie Walters mugs a little too much. Christine Baranski’s familiar dissipated glamour is put to good use in better lines, such as “Yoga makes my feet bigger.”.

          Scripted by the musical’s writer Catherine Johnson, it was directed by first-time film director Phyllida Lloyd who did the stage version. Apart from that last draggy half-hour, Lloyd did OK.  She found wonderful Greek faces among the villagers and let her stars do their thing, including in the cases of Streep and Brosnan their own singing, which I liked better than a Marni Nixon version.

          To those sour reviewers who tear this cobweb apart, remember it’s a fantasy, people!  Wake up and dream!