Mama Mia . . . not

Meryl Streep, a genuine movie star and a fine actress. Not perfect, of course, or she wouldn’t have knuckled under to pressure and starred in “The Bridges of Madison County.” It must have been pressure. Certainly she could tell the book was poor (crap is the word that comes to mind), and that very bad movie came to mind when I heard her say she never watches her own movies. But she was talking about the most recent one, “Mama Mia,” and she said that she has seen that one three times and can’t wait to see it the fourth. “Wow!” I thought. “You wouldn’t see Sophie’s Choice or The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but you would go four times to this one? It must be good, must be fun. Maybe I should go see it.”

I don’t go to many movies. Not many recommend themselves to me. This one, I thought about before hearing Meryl Streep’s comments. The trailers—shown at least a hundred times on TV—looked fun. It’s a musical. That sounded fun, too, and it features a lot of the music of Abba, not my favorite music but, again, “fun.” And usually I’m less likely to go to a movie that is hyped as much as this one has been, but Meryl Streep. She sings; she dances. She’s seen it three/four times.

Pierce Brosnan is the male lead. I mean, he wins the girl (the older woman, Streep) in the end, so that must make him the male lead. But his part, as I found out, is minimal and nothing remarkable. Remarkable it is, though, that he and Meryl Streep have absolutely no chemistry between them and never will as long as the this world lasts, and their kiss scenes are unconvincing and borderline repulsive. But I’ve never seen Pierce Brosnan have any chemistry with any one.

He is probably a nice man and is without doubt a proper Britisher who cannot say Mama the way 95% of human beings say it, as in Mama, but pronounced it in an interview as if he had never heard the word and was reading it for the first time, as if he didn’t just star in the movie with that word in its title and repeated many times in the title song. He actually said Mama, with the first “a” pronounced as in pablum, which made me think he certainly hasn’t seen the film three times and must have spent any down time he had—which was no doubt plenty—in his dressing room trailer. Mama—think pablum—Mia. It has no ring to it. But, again, he’s British.

So silly me, I went anyway. Mistake.

No doubt Meryl Streep keeps going back to watch it so she can see herself jump and run and climb on things and hear herself sing, which she does well enough, the singing, I mean. Clearly she can’t be going to hear herself be called Donna, a name that doesn’t look or sound like her.

Take a guess, now, is the movie very short on story and very long on exaggerated gestures and overacting, if that’s what they were doing? Oh yes.

And is the pace frenetic and tiresome? Oh yes. Besides, the movie is crude. Christine Baranski—she can actually dance, and she can sing—is, as usual, the highlighted crude person. Is that typecasting? But most of the stars get to be crude, too. Lucky for them.

And because this is a Hollywood production, even if it's set in Greece, one of the men who might be Meryl Streep’s daughter’s father (you with me?), played by Colin Firth, turns out to be gay. A bit too predictable for me. And the young actress, Amanda something, who plays Streep’s daughter, whose wedding all are about to celebrate but don't, and who is supposed to be a rising star that everyone has eyes upon, is nothing to write home about either.

I guess the bottom line is money. They’ll all make some. They got mine, after all.