How can I resist you? Hot on the heels of Hairspray, Mamma Mia! -- the hugely popular NYC tourist must-see based on the naggingly memorable ABBA songbook -- is also making the transition from Broadway stage to screen, with original stage director Phyllida Law behind the camera and a pretty stellar cast out front. Amanda Seyfried(Veronica Mars, Big Love) plays Sophie, the young bride-to-be determined to solve the mystery of her birth dad's identity on the eve of her Greek Isle wedding. Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard and Pierce Brosnan are the three likeliest suspects; Meryl Streep stars as her mom. Universal will be releasing Mamma Mia! in Summer 2008, but the trailer is starting to make the rounds. Will it be the summer’s biggest guilty pleasure? Probably, but who am I to get snarky about ABBA? “Waterloo” was the very first record I ever bought. It cost 98 cents, which makes me kind of pathetic and old.
Sigh. Color me a bit disappointed that the trailer pretty much goes out of its way to "hide" the musical nature of the movie (as did the trailer for, say, Moulin Rouge). There is not one suggestion that the characters actually break out into song.
After the success of Moulin and Chicago, are studios really still afraid of "puzzling" Joe and Jane Public with a movie musical?
I blame Viva Laughlin.
That said, Amanda Seyfried looks terrific. She played such a good little brat on All My Children.
I am looking forward to this movie a lot, and I hope that I'm not disappointed. I haven't seen the stage musical, but I bought the soundtrack after hearing my sister's copy, and have read that a few songs have been excised (Under Attack, Thank You for the Music, I Do I Do I Do and Knowing Me, Knowing You.) I will especially miss Under Attack, but at least I can listen to it whenever I want to...well, as long as my sons and husband aren't home. My daughter and I can sing ABBA to our hearts' content then.
I'm very critical of musicals-turned-movies, and I agree that the Sweeney Todd trailer decidedly glosses over the fact that it is, in fact, a musical (and if you believe the tone of the announcer, the "feel-good" movie of the season). True, there's no singing in the Mamma Mia trailer, but people don't usually break into such choreographed dance for any other reason - but maybe I just know that because I'm a huge fan of musicals; most people might not catch that.
