Let me be blunt when I say that living on a Greek island where everybody sings ABBA songs with Colin Firth and Meryl Streep is literally everything I want in life. Before anyone says that ‘Mamma Mia’ is technically not a rom-com when you Google movie it says it is a jukebox musical romantic comedy, so here we are.
For those of you who have never seen the movie (or the stage musical) let me set you the scene. In 2008 we watched Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) prepare for her wedding to Sky (Dominic Cooper). In that preparation she sent wedding invitations to three men, Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth) who might be her father based on names in her mothers, Donna’s (Meryl Streep) diary. They all show up to the island to come to this wedding, except to stop her mother from finding out she badly attempts to keep it hidden.
In the lead up to the wedding her mother finds out they are there, Sophie learns more about them and their relationship to her mother, there is an iconic rendition of ‘Does Your Mother Know’, the return of Donna and the Dynamos (Christine Baranski and Julie Walters), Donna helping Sophie get ready for the wedding and Sam attempting to rekindle things with Donna. We also get to hear Meryl Streep sing ‘Winner Takes It All’ and the only word that can be used to describe it is powerful.
Eventually everything kind off blows up at the wedding as Sky and Sophie don’t get married but Donna and Sam do. The film ends at the wedding reception and after two more musical performances, a pipe bursts and everyone ends up getting soaked in water (I feel like without more context that sounds more sexual than it was). The rest is history - until the second movie of course, but that is a different post.
This movie offers you Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan Amanda Seyfried, Christine Baranski and Julie Walters amongst others. You get to listen to a variety of ABBA classics. You get a funny movie, full of miscommunication, dance numbers and some beautiful views of a Greek island. If I haven’t done a good enough job at convincing you to watch this movie (which you probably should have already seen) just know that according to a behind-the-scenes video there was a lot of drinking happening on that set.
The first time I watched ‘Mamma Mia’ I was seven years old and I remember my mum putting mini umbrellas in our drinks and making a night of it. Now, at the age of 23 that still sounds like my idea of a good night. I get a real sense of nostalgia every time I think about the movie. I listen to the ‘Mamma Mia! The Movie Soundtrack’ on Spotify more times than I care to admit. I have also watched the ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ scene religiously on YouTube.
I am going to end this post with potentially the most controversial thing I have said on my Substack account - some of the song performances in the movie are better than the originals. Of course, ABBA is incredible and I am not going to name the specifics songs I will think were better done in the movie – but just like with ‘Glee’ covers there are certain songs where I just prefer the cover.