Mamma Mia! A Movie Review	MPAA Rated - PG-13 It's 1:48 Long A Review by The Dude on the Right

Let’s get to it…

A synopsis of the movie that I read on a website I check out relates that the story of "Mamma Mia!" is really the story of a tramp, a hussy if you will, broken up with a man she thinks she loves, only to find herself, for the next couple of weeks, sleeping with men to, well, she’s sleeping with men. She has a kid, doesn’t really know who the father is, doesn’t really care, and raises the girl to be a good kid. In any 2008 scenario, when the three dads are reintroduced into the life of the daughter, we could probably see them all on an episode with Maury Povich, but since this is a feel-good musical, set to the music of ABBA, let’s dispense with the 2008 reality and make it all nice and sweet, so that, at the end of the movie, we just want to get up, and sing, and dance to "Dancing Queen." So, here’s the feel-good synopsis …

"Mamma Mia!" is the story of a tramp, a hussy if you will, broken up with a man, oh, wait, I’m sorry, "Mamma Mia!" is the story about a single mother, Donna (Meryl Streep), struggling to make her Greek resort a viable place for tourists, and her daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), is about to get married to some dude. Donna is having a hard time wrestling with the idea that Sophie is growing up and will be leaving the nest, and Sophie is flustered because she doesn’t know who her dad is. Now, Sophie, as teenagish/twentyish-year old dudettes are wont to do, when they find their mom’s old diary, finds the identity of the three men who might be her father (the fact that her mother slept around a lot doesn’t seem to bother her) and decides to invite the three dudes, Sam (Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth), and Bill (Steilan Skarsgard) to the wedding, in the hopes of finding out who her father really is (going on Maury would have been so much easier). Donna is freaked to find out the three dudes are on the island, especially since she doesn’t know the underhanded dealings of her daughter, Donna’s friends are in town to help her sing and dance through her turmoil, and yup, as opposed to an episode of "Maury," there is really no yelling and screaming, and with the music of ABBA, all will live happily ever after.

Okay, look, I know I’m being probably overly-critical of the story of the movie, but for me, in "theater musical" to "movie musical" history, I really didn’t like "Mamma Mia!" for many of the same reasons I usually don’t, namely that the film folks forget the quaintness of the theatrical version and try to create this grand, visual masterpiece; it never looks like the actors are "singing" their parts, nor can most of them act when they are pretending to sing; and for the sake of movie timing, the movie people cut out stuff.

And then, for this movie, there was Pierce Brosnan.

Look, I generally like Mr. Brosnan as an actor, thought he was fantastic in "The Matador," but when he started singing during "S.O.S.", whether intentional or not from the filmmakers, the crowd started laughing, and so did I, and I think that was wrong. And I’m not going to go into how Pierce got cast in this movie, but whether intentional for his comedic singing, or because he looked good on screen, sadly his role just let me know this movie had no chance to live up to the stage version.

A lot of dudettes in the theater seemed to have loved this movie, I didn’t, so to be fair to everyone I’m going to simply split my giving it 1 star out of 5 with the dudettes in the theater giving it at least 4 stars out of 5, leaving the rating for "Mamma Mia!" at 2 ½ stars out of 5. See the trailer and if you like it, well, you’ll be in the 4 star side – if not you might just poke your eyes out, but not your ears, because who doesn’t want to hear ABBA songs sung by people who can’t really sing?

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!