Mamma Mia!

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By Anna Macrae | 8 Sep, 2008

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Directed by Phyllida Lloyd

Take a 70s pop ‘band’ (if you can call them that), an unspoiled Greek island, and an actress whom in previous films has played a chick with boobs that tell the weather, and what do you end up seeing one sad Thursday morning? Mamma Mia! of course! My my, how could I resist it!?

Well, I couldn’t. The hard part was finding someone to go with: the die-hard fans saw it the day it came out, and the rest of the world refused to acknowledge that it had. I eventually managed to find a friend whose secret love for ABBA pressured her to go, so we trotted off to Regent on Manners to get some cheap seats and moreover some cheap thrills. We were not surprised to find ourselves alone in the theatre, so embraced the emptiness to recreate our own version of ‘Dancing Queen’ while the movie was still playing.

Mamma Mia! begins with nearly-married Sophie, who finds her mum’s old diary and in a quest to find her dad, invites three of her mum’s old flames to her wedding. Old flames turn into fires, and before you know it, every line in the movie is turned into a song-and-dance extravaganza. Which actually makes it even more entertaining ‘cause you and your friends can pull out the classic “I feel a song coming on!” every four minutes.

Although the plot is reasonably simple and the surprises aren’t particularly surprising, overall it’s a cheap price to pay for an hour of good laughs, better scenery and the sound of sweet sweet reincarnated 70s sung by Meryl Streep and everyone’s favourite Pierce Brosnan. The best bit of the movie is when every woman on the island stops working and dances down the street in this fantastic girl-power moment that is hard to resist. Including every ABBA hit ever written also makes Mamma Mia! a gold-medallist in this month’s Top Flicks.

So if you’re female gendered or a theatre student or perhaps just want something to do on a Thursday morning, then go and see Mamma Mia! Do I love it more than I should? I do, I do, I do, I do, I do!