Xanadu, Wedding Singer, and Legally Blonde also had a bunch of nominations.

Like what Michael said, it helps there are only a few eligible each season.

I haven't seen Mamma Mia the stage show, but Christian is right.

If Xanadu (which I have seen) could get a nomination for Best Musical, then Mamma Mia getting one isn't hard to believe. I mean, don't get me wrong, I thought Xanadu was incredibly fun. But it's just that: fun and insanely lightweight, just like Mamma Mia.

Ive more or less given up on M.

My midlife crisis is over.

I use dude sometimes. I'm not mad lol.
Also, i think having lived with actors fucking OBSESSED with musicals for over a year gives me a pretty decent second hand knowledge of it. I'm no musical genius, but you know, hearing the wicked soundtrack four times a day and always being subjected to fucking direly dull conversations about fucking bad musicals gave me a feel for the response to Mamma Mia! since suggesting it to try and be relevant to conversations which very rudely disregarded my, or anyone who wasnt a musical fans existence was met with only angry scowls.

I loved the movie.
Never saw the show.
But know true musical fans look down thier noses at it.

I had a lot of fun watching this. Streep, Baranskski, and Walters were the highlights for me. Is it just me or did Julie Walters lose a lot of weight? It took me forever to realize it was her!

B+

Here is my thought.

The choerography is cheesy, nobody can really sing, and the sedways into songs is kinda corny. Despite these flaws, the movie is fun because of this. In fact, it is fun that it makes you forget these flaws.

Grade: B.

Forgot to post my review on this one... I liked it a lot.

Zennier is correct in this thread, both the stage and film versions have the same purpose... Pure enjoyment. And for me, it succeeded there immensely. The songs are catchy (I like ABBA), the characters are likeable with Streep and Seyfried doing lovely jobs creating believable emotional people, the dancing is energetic, the movie just moves nicely. What I liked most about the movie was despite the hammed up extras (which I liked), the musical number set-ups themselves were pretty simple. Most of them are sung just in regular places, on the beach, by the hotel, in a room, in the boat, where they are simply singing what they feel, true sing-talking. It felt a lot more "natural" than in Hairspray, Dreamgirls, or Chicago, for some reason. Like the number with Seyfried + the 3 dads on the boat, begun by Firth playing on that guitar... I loved that. Same thing with Mamma Mia or Don't Go Wasting Your Emotion... they blended in.

I had a few problems, like the Dancing Queen dancing on the dock, and I never liked Sam and Donna's quick marriage (Also Brosnan's love serenade was kind of boring and dull... the S.O.S. song was good though). Also, The Take A Chance On Me number is completely out of place. The number itself is funny, but yeah, it would've fit better in the middle of the movie. Then the water break... Felt like they filmed a big song in the rain, cut it, then said "fuck it, we went to the trouble to make that geyser, let's just keep in it in there." The I Have A Dream ending also felt a little rushed.

But while these problems existed, the experience remained the same... I had a lot of fun. Good time at the movies. Thought it captured the energy of the stage version quite well actually, I was left with the same euphoria after both.

3.5/5

I wasn't expecting to, but I enjoyed this. Yes, it is just a fast-paced, sweet summer treat, but this is also just what it needed to be. The Swedish pop songs (though not deep) are charming and compliment the gorgeous locales the plot's set in. The cast is great. I had a good time.

B/B+

You're right, in fact if i remember correctly in the stage version, Take A Chance on Me was sung right before the wedding, when Bill finds out Donna is gonna walk Sophie down the aisle and Rosie is there to console him.

I saw the "Sing-A-Long" version today. It's probably not the best way to go for someone who hasn't seen the film before. It's not because there are people in the audience singing along which could ruin the enjoyment (the people singing ABBA on screen is enough; thank you kind people though), it's because I got caught up in reading the fucking words. I'm sitting there trying my best to enjoy the film, but every three seconds I kept looking down at the bottom of the screen to read instead of paying attention to the people on screen. You can get away with it during the foreign film, but if it's a musical you can miss a lot in a couple of seconds. Thankfully I've never encountered a foreign film that also happened to be a musical. And I also got lucky. No one at my screening sang with the film. Even though it's ABBA and we've all heard their music whether we've liked it or not (I like a handful of their stuff), you really have to see the film at least a couple of times to even be able to sing along to it correctly. At least that's my guess as to why no one sang. Either that or I was sitting with a bunch of old woman cowards.

Okay fuck the sing-a-long. I'm kind of stuck in the middle in terms of my opinion. On one hand I can't say I was bored. I defy anyone to walk out of the theater without humming. It's just not possible. Meryl Streep is great. She's the best thing in the film in terms of her acting and her singing. To her credit she can really belt it. On the other hand Pierce Brosnan is.............passable? He gives it everything he can, but let's face it, singing is not his strong suit. He gets by though. As for Amanda Seyfried, she's just perfect casting. She can sing and she looks exactly like Meryl Streep.

My problem though is a problem that most theatrical adaptations of musicals have and that's that there are just way too many fucking songs. Now I know there is an effort to put the musical exactly as it was on Broadway up on the screen so that those people who enjoyed the show will love the movie. The problem though is that every fucking minute there is another song. As soon as one song ends another one picks up and so on and so forth. There are only one or two five minute gaps where someone isn't singing. Now that works on Broadway. You have to fill the two and a half to three hour timeslot with as much stuff as possible. It's also more thrilling for the audience to see it in person. It works that way. It doesn't have the same effect in a movie theater. If you're going to have a 108 minute film, you have to give the audience a break. After 12 songs within the first half hour (I'm exaggerating of course), it becomes a bit of an overload. And when 12 of those songs are by ABBA.......And it doesn't help that it feels like they are trying to perform every ABBA song ever made towards the end of the film. I agree completely with Shack on the "Take a Chance on Me" scene. It's funny but enough already. End the fucking movie (though I liked the stuff during the credits).

And there was a scene during the film which felt like it didn't belong in there at all. I'm talking about the scene with Christine Baranski on the beach with the guys - she's singing "Does Your Mother Know" (thanks IMDb - they all just kind of blended in towards the middle). Why is that scene in the film? It literally stopped the film for three minutes. Did we learn anything in that scene? Seriously, I could've missed the point there.

So as I said I'm kind of in the middle. I liked everybody in the film and I enjoyed a good chunk of the musical numbers, but I was kind of taken out of the film since there were so many of them. Yeah I know it's a musical, but losing a couple of songs here or there wouldn't have hurt. And I also agree with Scott in that the transitions from one song to the next could've been handeled better. I remember one transistion lasted about five seconds and consisted of Pierce Brosnan just turning his head. What the hell is that?

A weak **½

The solo by Christine Baranski probably was given to her to get her to do the movie?

Maybe???

Just as Julie Walters got Take a Chance on me.

Here is something that I saw on IMDB - pretty impressive.

Benny Andersson, former ABBA member and co-composer of the songs, calls Meryl Streep "a miracle". Meryl Streep came to Stockholm to do her vocal for the song "The Winner Takes it All". She finished it in one take.

7/10 -> B-

It's hard not to have fun watching this movie. But as a movie it's pretty mediocre.

All the quality and fun come from ABBA music, THE pop group ever. There's isn't a single group overthere with such a great and catchy hooks. Unfortunately the movie - the story and execution (from directing, acting, etc...) - is mediocre on all accounts. Meryl and Amanda are the only two parts that are elevated from the medocrity, but although credited as the leads, they don't have too much of a screen time.

I'd give it slightly smaller grade, but I don't have heart to give it a smaller grade because of ABBA.

i like how everyone says "greattt fun, had such a riot yay was so fun blahh blah" but then counters it with "but as a movie, not so good!" and gives it a crappy grade.

Like forgive me if im wrong, but its not our position as film goers to sit and critique the movie-making process, its our job to sit and critique the end product largely based upon our own enjoyment of it.

Its an obviously display of movie snobbery that this one gets a bit of a nose up from KJ but The Dark Knight gets moist in wet cum.

Thats like saying England beat Andorra so why the fuck complain about the display.

Yay. The end product sucks. The story is laughably bad, the characters are less than paper-thin caricatures, and the lazy asses behind the movie didn't even bother to make a movie. This could've been filmed in theater, considering 90% of the film takes places in Donna's hotel, in that central courtyard. Talk about a lame adaptation. Yeah they're adapting a musical play, but they're also making a movie which gives them freedom and doesn't bind them to a single small stage. It's not like this was an original musical so they couldn't take a lot of freedom into adapting it. Mamma Mia! was put to capitalize on ABBA songs. It's pure and simple as that.

But thankfully everyone involved knew they had a shitty material, so between every song there is like a total minute or two of actual some kind of development and dialogue. The only time the song was actually sung with passion and really felt was Streep's The Winner Takes It All. That really felt like the only song that they successfully managed to incorporate and connect to the characters.

And thankfully ABBA songs are more than enough fun that they can make this movie fun. If the songs were original and anything but ABBA, no one would even watch this movie, let alone say it's fun.

This is not a case of movie snobbery. You're being the snob here, for putting yourself above us all and calling people snobs.

As you praised this song - I bolded above - I am reposting this.

It was my favorite song.

Here is something that I saw on IMDB - pretty impressive.

Benny Andersson, former ABBA member and co-composer of the songs, calls Meryl Streep "a miracle". Meryl Streep came to Stockholm to do her vocal for the song "The Winner Takes it All". She finished it in one take.

In a sense the problem is that the source material, i.e. the songs, is too good. The film itself didn't add much of anything to it. Just listening to the entire soundtrack is enjoyable enough, so you can't really go much wrong to begin with. That's the difference between Hairspray and Mamma Mia. The former has far fewer numbers of memorable songs, but the film elevated your enjoyment using the media freedom it has. The enjoyment for Mamma Mia, on the other hand, depends too much on its songs, and basically it worked despite of director's effort and choice, not because of it; I consider that a miss.

but how can it be a miss, if you enjoyed the end results, even if that was mainly the songs ....

Also didn't DreamGirls kind of do that.....break into songs instead of talking....

Breaking into songs instead of talking isn't much of a problem for original musicals because lyrics are mostly written with the story and the characters in mind, thus in quality musicals songs are used to progress the story and characters. But when you're trying to glue twentysomething songs that were written as stand alone songs with a lame ass try for a story you have a serious problem.


But you see that's just the problem. These songs don't belong to the musical per se, so it's a miss saved by the fact that the borrowed part (the songs) is awesome.

Watched it for the second time. Up my grade to B+ (from my original grade B-). I have lots of fun this time, much much more than the first viewing. And guess what, I just called my friends to watch it again sometime very soon.

Ohh I wish there is a sing-along version over here too.

I actually expected to like this quite a bit but I was heavily disapointed. There were some pretty charming moments, the girl and Brosnan were great, but overall I didn't enjoyed it as much as I hoped too. D+

That just happened to me last night. I watched it with my parents and my niece (my second time seeing it since when I first saw it in theaters). My parents ended up really enjoying it despite them not liking musicals or ever watching them. I thought they might enjoy this one. I actually enjoyed it more than I did when I saw it in theaters. It is just so damn fun. And I don't care what anyone says, Meryl is "fabulous" in this. I highly enjoyed her performance. She seemed like she was having a great time and I had a great time watching her.


I'm bumping my grade up to an 8/10 (A-).

I don't recall anyone saying anything bad about Streep - - all I heard was universal praise for her performance, despite what they may have thought about the film overall...

I think Meryl was kinda annoying..

I think I'm gonna stay with my B grade.. fully dedicated to ABBA songs, nothing else..

Surprise, surprise - - the first mention of it in this thread...