Aryaman Majumdar

Where do I start? The film derived its title from the 1975 song 'mamma mia' by a Swedish band called ABBA. Now, just as the the title suggests, the film features the the song as the title track. In fact, the film is a musical and the whole soundtrack of the movie are various songs released by ABBA such as 'dancing queen', 'slipping through my fingers', 'voulez-vous'. In the leading roles we see two-time academy award winner Meryl Streep, Colin firth, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski. Even though we have seen Meryl to do a variety of roles in the past like in Sophie's choice and in Kramer vs Kramer, this was an entire paradigm shift. Streep is seen doing a musical for the first time. The story revolves around a girl Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) in her early twenties in an island in Greece. She's still "finding her life" and wants to know who her father is, as she was raised by a single mother, Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep). She got to know from her mother's diaries that she had three lovers and one of them could be her potential father. She invites them to her wedding without her mother's consent and the story unfolds giving base to this confusion. Although superficially it may seem that the film is purely based on humour/comedy, it is not so. The film has a perfect rendition of emotions portraying middle-age crisis, betrayal by a lover, regaining father affections, sexual attraction towards a person. The film will make you cry, laugh, angry and empathetic at the same (although you'll never miss a chance to vibe and sing along to all the songs). It is evident that Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan share a fabulous on-screen chemistry but I'm not too sure about Amanda and Dominic, because I personally felt that their romance, as portrayed in the film, missed the spark (which I'm sure was not the director's intention). The other actors played their roles to absolute perfection, taking note of how versatile actors they are (stellan skarsgard, Colin firth, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski). 'Mamma mia' is one of the few movies which i rewatch time and time again, without getting bored. On the first watch, the film made it to my top 5 and it's pretty unfortunate that the film got an 'A-' on CinemaScore and an average 55%. 'Mamma mia' is the kind of which does not align to everyone's palate and it interests those who are ABBA music enthusiasts (like me). Overall, the film is one of my personal favourites and I'll give it a solid 3.9/5, respecting all parameters of screenplay, direction, production, acting, visual effects etc. "Neither you and i are to blame, when all is said and done" - when all is said and done, ABBA.