Story Photos
 In this image released by Universal Pictures, from left, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski are shown in a scene from "Mamma Mia!."
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Cathy Zimmerman: 'Mama Mia' critics missed the party
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 11:20 PM PDT
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E-mail this articleColumn by Cathy Zimmerman
This Day editor
Even after reading two terrible reviews of “Mamma Mia,” I spent an evening at the Three Rivers Cinemas wallowing in its pleasures. Surrounding me were dozens of women around my age (it was my first senior discount movie!) and a few quietly suffering husbands.
How could I pay to see a movie that Shawn Levy of the Oregonian and Anthony Lewis of the New Yorker both trashed — in reviews I mostly agreed with?
“The story is just a series of flimsy excuses to sing the pre-existing ABBA hits that make up the score,” Levy wrote in his July 18 review. Yeah, that sounds right.
“The sloppiness of the story could easily be masked by a party atmosphere.” Spot on.
Phyllida Lloyd “directs her actors as if they’re on a stage.” Check.
Lewis, who compared the movie to “torture,” whined that Catherine Johnson did not write a play but a ‘theatrical kebab, onto which she skewered as many ABBA songs as humanly possible.” He’s got that right.
Watching Pierce Brosnan sing, you would assume he had a “complex digestive problem” that he was at that moment “working out.” So clever, so correct.
Not only did these observations not put a dent in my enjoyment of the movie, but they also missed the point: Every cheesy choice added to the enjoyment. For certain audiences, that is.
Just as testosterone fuels a certain genre of movies, estrogen bathes another. “Mamma Mia” is a film by, for and about women; in fact, it probably narrows the field to women over 45 (and a lot of gay men, which may account for the shrill tone of the criticism, but that’s another column).
Neither the musical nor the movie was meant to be a classic.
Decades ago, American musicals included elegant, well-written “books,” or scripts, to provide scaffolding for the singing and dancing. “South Pacific,” “My Fair Lady,” “West Side Story,” “Carousel,” “The Kind and I” and “Cabaret” had moral, social or psychological underpinnings.
Since then, the form has broken free of constraint. We’ve had musicals about hippies, Jesus, heroin addiction and Richard Nixon. Plenty of stage shows are “just” splashy packages for well-loved pop music.
“Jersey Boys” is about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. “Movin’ Out” showcases Billy Joel songs. ‘Dream Girls” tells the story of Motown. And the latest of these is “Mamma Mia.”
In a stroke of loopy genius, the play’s writer and director took the best hits of the Swedish rock group ABBA, ripped off an old movie and put them all into a show that staggers from one effervescent song to the next.
Smart? They didn’t have to write melody or lyrics, and not much of a script, either.
Levy and Lewis are shocked that these two women, who have no film creds, took over the movie themselves.
Who cares? They weren’t trying to make “No Country for Old Men.”
They slapped together “Mamma Mia” the way a bunch of 14-year-old girls would tumble through a sleepover. (Now let’s dance! Now let’s eat! Now let’s cry!) They designed the sets in the hormonal reverie of cheerleaders decorating the gym for prom.
They shot the movie through the color filters of adolescent fantasy. Directed the songs as if they were drunk on $4 wine.
Well, that’s where the music comes from.
No one acquainted with menopause can sit still during an ABBA song. I think of Swedes as being cool characters, but these songs hit every maudlin milestone we’ve lived through since we were 17, young and sweet ... We were the dancing queens. At least in our minds.
As only Meryl Streep can demonstrate, we still are.
(As for gay men, what do you think it’s like for them when they finally cut loose and be who they are? Listen to the words to “I Have a Dream” and try not to weep.)
To Levy and Lewis and all those cinephiles barfing into their popcorn: Let it go, guys.
If your woman wants to see “Mamma Mia,” be nice and sit through it. Better yet, buy her a Dove Bar, leave her in the dark with her own kind and go into one of the other theaters at the cineplex. There, you can watch a mature, sophisticated, masculine film.
You know, with comic-book heroes in leather leotards and face paint, zooming around in sports cars that look like bats and blowing up buildings.
Originally published Aug. 5, 2008.
Other recent Cathy Zimmerman columns:
Can't feel at ease over leisurevilles movement
Make sure those toy guns look like toys
Every decision we make sets other change in motion
Con man's earthquake theory full of cracks
Playing the cards of parenting
Lisagail wrote on Aug 5, 2008 6:51 AM:
cahuita wrote on Aug 5, 2008 9:05 AM:
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