Review

Review Date: 20-July-08
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Usually when I go to see a bad movie I feel embarrassed for the actors, but Mamma Mia! made me feel embarrassed for myself. What if someone cool saw me coming out of the theater and inferred that I advocate claptrap? This is, after all, an absurd musical about a young bride (cue squeals) on a Mediterranean island (cue sighs) whose single mother (cue Red Hatters) slept with three men (cue chuckles) who could be her father, so she invites them all (cue elder hunks) to the nuptials. With a dopey chorus in the background, mother and daughter, friends and hunks sing, dance, drink, reminisce, bumble like fools, and get gooey about love and finding one's true path — a big, fat, shallow Greek wedding. Sheesh. It so happens that I do like most of the actors but I have only so much chagrin to go around. Besides, I have a feeling they will do all right in a picture that counterbalances the dark superheroes of summer.

Despite the presence of Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, and Julie Walters, the only things Mamma Mia! has going for it are the ABBA tunes. (I could take or leave young star Amanda Seyfried.) Yes, the Swedish fab four inspired the Broadway show that inspired the movie, and their enduring magnetism cannot be denied. In fact, although their songs are now considered oldies, the music is not what signals a staleness in the movie, an inherent expiration date for its highly questionable appeal. I could be wrong, but I doubt whether the "You go, middle-aged girl!" energy on which Mamma Mia! attempts to fly will retain its potency much longer. Women fifty or older today may have been brought up to believe that females should not exert their personalities, pursue ambitions, or openly crave sex (especially divorced from childbearing), but younger generations have no such inhibitions. Indeed I would say demureness is fast disappearing from the Western world, so already the sight of Streep, Walters, and Christine Baranski playing dress-up and drooling after men appears too mundane to be entertaining. This sort of mass-market empowerment crap is also two-faced. It attempts to accommodate both the notion of women as independent agents and the traditional view of marriage as the ultimate feminine goal. The movie tries to lure women of all ages with its wedding theme even though the insanity that currently surrounds this ceremony is steeped in outdated social structures, gender roles, and fantasies about a virginal hymen. Boiled down to its elements, Mamma Mia! is yesterday's news masquerading as liberation.

It's cruel, I know, but I cannot conclude without singling out poor Pierce Brosnan, a dignified and competent actor who can barely carry a tune and comes off worse than anybody else. Thinking about how his best moment is standing mutely by while Streep delivers the one piece of any power ("The Winner Takes It All"), I become embarrassed again, now outwardly.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.