Mama Mia - film review

SPOILER WARNING – I give plot details below.

Normally I hate, loathe and detest musicals. I hate the cheese, and I hate people randomly bursting into song in the way real people don’t. But I’ll make an exception for Mama Mia.

This is mainly because I have always been an Abba fan. So I went to the cinema with the expectation that I was basically seeing a music DVD, a load of songs with a good video. In this case, the video linked the various songs in a common story and a common context. Approaching it in that way, it did not seem like a musical, and I was able to sit back and enjoy.

And the songs were indeed good. They sat well in the story, and with a few exceptions did not seem contrived. Julie Walters was particularly good at making the lyrics come to life in the context of the story.

The men can’t sing to save their lives. But starting from that assumption, they did a lot better than I had been led to expect. Abba always had a gay following, so I should not have been surprised that one of the ‘Dads’ was gay, or that at the end there were lots of men dancing in the fountain with no shirts on.

The plot is full of holes, mysterious characters that appear and disappear without explanation etc. It mystified me that the film starts with two girls arriving at the island to be bridesmaids, with only a couple of small bags. What woman travels that light in normal times, let alone such an important role in a wedding? On a deeper level, I wanted more explanation of how the men reacted to being asked to give her away, only to find someone else was doing it. I was also disappointed that it ends with a wedding and a postponement, rather than two weddings. (Or 4).

But despite all the plotholes, I really enjoyed the movie. The overall story was good, the locations excellent, and the photography superb. It was very cheesy, but it was supposed to be. Abba is cheesy, and so the film had to be cheesy to be true to the music and the songs and the band, and setting out to be cheesy it was 100% successful.

I loved it.

So was the bit at the end, dancing in the fountain of a pagan goddes, constitute advocating her sexuality - have fun regardless of marriage comittment? Or did the church wedding of the main protagonists overide that message?