Musical mess

Everyone and everything suffers in Mamma Mia! | Arsenio Orteza

It's hard to tell  what suffers most in Phyllida Lloyd's cinematic adaptation of the stage musical Mamma Mia! (rated PG-13 for occasional sexual humor)—the ABBA songs on which it's based, common sense, or taste.

The plot, a kind of My Favorite Wife rewritten as My Favorite Dad, is promising: 20-year-old Sophie (Amanda Siegfried) invites to her wedding three of her never-married mother's former lovers in the hope of identifying, and finally bonding with, her father. Lloyd, however, is uninterested or incapable of mining the conflicts for laughs or coherence. Striving to be serious and lighthearted, in favor of marriage and opposed to it, Mamma Mia! ends up neither having nor eating its cake.

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August 09, 2008, Vol. 23, No. 16

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