Review of Mamma Mia! (2008) by Arth J — 29 May 2018

My sentiments exactly..

Mamma Mia!

The songs, choreography and background score; something that musical acts completely rely upon and not affordable to go down south, is surprisingly dull and not at all up beating. The feature is short on such technical aspects and fails to hold it up to the viewer's expectations and undermines the whole energy of the cinema instead of celebrating it. The idea might have been something to explore upon but the writing is so frizzy and lazy that it derails within its first act after which it never even attempts to lift itself up. Phyllida Lloyd lacks execution skills and needs to do some extra work on it but then the adapted screenplay by Catherine Johnson too didn't have enough crisp to make it on the screen in the first place. The performance too isn't up to the mark which comes as a bit of a shock especially from Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Christine Baranski although it is enlightening to watch Julie Walters every now on then on screen. Mamma Mia! is a lost cause from the first frame where even though it attempts to go art-sy there is genuinely nothing to look up to and the reason being sloppy writing, poor execution and editing and somewhat questionable performances.