Mamma Mia! (2008)

Mamma Mia is clearly a musical salvo of spangly flares sent up for the nostalgic delight of ABBA fans (and, to a lesser degree, aficionados of musicals in general). The vast majority of ABBA fans are women, with an accompanying arc of gay men and a small tracery of het men. I am not a straight man who was coerced into seeing Mamma Mia since I do not brand (and avoid) any movie that a woman would watch as a "chick flick." (To me, a chick flick is any movie starring primarily or only women who talk and emote about emotions. On a parallel vein, "date movies" are not "chick flicks" because men are supposed to be one-half of each dating or marriage relationship.) Sure, I wanted to see Mamma Mia -- but a female voting bloc meant that I saw it sooner than I would have solo. Make no mistake, Mamma Mia's music and choreography make for lyrical, heady, trippy fun -- more because of ABBA's comfortable nostalgia than cogent or groundbreaking art. (You don't dance your heart out in Manolo Blahniks.) Others' complaints aside, I found the movie to be a blast. It is, however, largely if almost thoroughly fluff: giddy fluff, girly fluff, blonder than Legally Blonde fluff, jawdroppingly astounding to men fluff. It's like I've been transported to a world men rarely see (and try to escape from when they do): Estrogen City, Girl Talk Bay, Dishtown, Confidant Cove, and Pealing Squeals Heights. Yikes! While bride-to-be Amanda Seyfried is a gorgeous young woman and singer, her deviousness with wedding invitations only proves how outgunned men will always be on women's turf. Reading her mother's 20-year-old diary to her gal pals is a hoot: "Dot dot dot! That's what they said back then!" Meryl Streep is a surprisingly gifted singer and dancer -- is there nothing this woman cannot do? -- and her musical-revue reunion (with Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) always entertains. I continually cackled at the terse man-to-man interaction, '60s flashbacks, and gameface singing chops of Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, and Pierce Brosnan -- who acquits himself quite well in my opinion, since singing requires more of a courageous than a command performance. Anyway, the story's premise exists because none of these men could talk about their feelings much less sing -- yet in droll comedic fashion, here they are in a musical! (Lighten up, people!) The morally conservative may have a problem with this comedy's premise that Meryl's character was intimate with three men during the month she conceived her daughter, however, her romantic vulnerability at the time is explained and she is declaimed as otherwise maternal, moral, hardworking, and even dowdy. While this musical makes marginal if comedic references to sex (viz. Christine's older-woman put-down of the cabana boy) and the middle lost my interest during a lot of inexplicable running and singing at night, Mamma Mia is a family film experience that many parents may choose to share with their sons and daughters 13 and older. 4 stars.