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Mamma Mia!
Universal Pictures


7.7

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 127 votes
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MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sex-related comments

Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Amanda Seyfried, and Christine Baranski

An independent, single mother who owns a small hotel on an idyllic Greek island, Donna is about to let go of Sophie, the spirited daughter she's raised alone. For Sophie's wedding, Donna has invited her two lifelong best girlfriends--practical and no-nonsense Rosie and wealthy, multi-divorcee Tanya--from her one-time backing band, Donna and the Dynamos. But Sophie has secretly invited three guests of her own. On a quest to find the identity of her father to walk her down the aisle, she brings back three men from Donna's past to the Mediterranean paradise they visited 20 years earlier. Over 24 chaotic, magical hours, new love will bloom and old romances will be rekindled on this lush island full of possibilities. (Universal Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Musical \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Catherine Johnson
DIRECTED BY:	Phyllida Lloyd
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: July 18, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	108 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK \| USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

It's a delightful piece of filmmaking with a marvelous cast topped by Meryl Streep in one of her smartest and most entertaining performances ever.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie takes the ABBA jukebox musical that ate London, and is still eating Broadway, and turns it into a surprisingly sensuous experience.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The chorus backs the soloists powerfully, and they are as fresh as the rest of the film: fat and fit, homely and handsome, young gods and old codgers – in short, people you might really see in Greece. Reality in a musical? That alone makes it worth your open-eared attention.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Mamma Mia! is fun, the music's terrific and the cast is appealing.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

An exuberant if not always brilliantly crafted adaptation of the campy ABBA musical.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's airheaded just like the songs it embraces but, if you enjoy them, there's every reason to believe you'll appreciate the film.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The good-natured silliness is contagious. When Streep runs singing through a Greek village, it's like a spirited homage to "The Sound of Music."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

This is an actress (Streep) who can pull off anything -- including a shamelessly kitschy musical.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Yes, of course this is fairly old-fashioned entertainment, but it's really, really entertaining.

Slate Dana Stevens

It makes bursting spontaneously into song seem like a perfectly reasonable--indeed, highly desirable--thing to do, and it leaves the audience wanting to do the same. I see a big uptick in late-summer karaoke parties.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Taken for what it is – a fluffy, intergenerational farce as a frame for some seventies musical nostalgia – Mamma Mia! just gets away with it, in spite of director Lloyd's lack of cinematic inexperience.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

As a story, Mamma Mia! is a sham, a narrative so rickety it makes "Grease" seem like Shakespeare. It fails as a musical, too, since only about half of the songs have any bearing on the scene that preceded them.

Premiere Emily Rems

Before plunking down your cash for a ride on the Mamma Mia! express when it pulls into town, just ask yourself one question: Do I really dig ABBA?

Variety Jordan Mintzer

Scribe-creator Catherine Johnson (also in her first screen outing) and theater-opera vet Lloyd can't seem to find the right tone or style for their globally celebrated material.

Empire Angie Errigo

Cute, clean, camp fun, full of sunshine and toe tappers. Guaranteed to put grins on tweenies who are in to High School Musical, grans with a pair of platforms still at the back of the wardrobe, and a lot of people in between tone.

Time Richard Corliss

By the end-credit sequence, when the stars appear in spandex outfits to reprise Dancing Queen, the audience may be singing along as if they'd overdosed on ouzo.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's tempting to say that Mamma Mia! has the worst choreography of any big-screen musical in history, though that would imply that what happens in the film IS choreography.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It's funny what you buy completely onstage and resist completely, or nearly, on-screen. Case in point: Mamma Mia!

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

All singing! All dancing! All squealing! The money-minting Broadway musical has been adapted into the year's most aggressive chick flick, with a score of irresistibly catchy ABBA tunes sweetening the dumb story like peaches in cottage cheese.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The incongruous mix of real locations and stage sets, real voices and overdubs, is a constant distraction, while the choreography lumbers in group numbers and goes flat in more intimate ones.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

This is a movie guaranteed to please crowds, if only because it insists on their affection so strenuously.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Meryl Streep can do anything: sing, dance, do splits, act her heart out. She (almost) saves this clumsy, overwrought film version of the Abba musical that's been running on stages from Broadway to Barcelona since 1999.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This movie wasn't made for me. It was made for the people who will love it, of which there may be a multitude. The stage musical has sold 30 million tickets, and I feel like the grouch at the party.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

By turns entertaining and excruciating.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

You can have a perfectly nice time watching this spirited adaptation of the popular stage musical and, once the hangover wears off, acknowledge just how bad it is.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

It's little more than droopy ditties draped around a threadbare plot.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

I COULD do without "Dancing Queen" stuck in my head, but that will unstick soon enough, and with any luck so too will the memory of Streep noodling on an air guitar.

NPR Bob Mondello

This plot is not being taken terribly seriously. It's mostly a pretext for songs that are mostly a pretext for acting silly.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

On the scale of modern musical adaptations, it's not a disaster of "The Producers" proportions. But it is missing the razzle-dazzle of a success like "Chicago."

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Though the filmmakers may have been imagining they were re-creating the old days of MGM musicals, it's the Village People's misguided "Can't Stop the Music" that comes to mind instead.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The direction is slack -- it's Lloyd's first feature film and it shows -- the choreography clumsy and every ten minutes there's yet another gratuitous showstopper shouting in your face and insisting you have a good time.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Poor Pierce Brosnan. Sport that he is, he does his level best to be a song-and-dance man but it's just not in him. He's touchingly awful. The same could probably be said for the entire movie.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Like a party where everyone is so desperate to have a good time that it makes you miserable.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Seyfried (of Big Love and Mean Girls) is a radiant object and can sing, but I'd like to forget the others--especially Brosnan, whose singing is the best imitation I've heard of a water buffalo.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Ferocious onslaught of obligatory good cheer.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

I can see how Mamma Mia! might be a fun stage musical. As a movie musical, it's a train wreck.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Watching Streep and her two BFFs, played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, grinning and giggling their way through Mamma Mia! I felt I was being thoroughly, and unenjoyably, punished.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 127 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Sharron C. gave it a10:
I loved the movie..it's so uplifting, spirited, "get up and dance feeling" and sing to the top of your lungs...one must keep in mind, it is a broadway musical so it is a different tone than just a regular movie. I give it a 10 plus.

randy w. gave it a10:
Amazing! Best movie I've seen in years! You'll love it! Acting and singing are outstanding!

B Ada gave it a10:
Great story. great music. great acting. Amazing movie.

Edna E. gave it a10:
Best movie in a long time real fun first time in years the audience clapped after the show.

star power gave it a0:
This is so bad, i think the plot gave me cancer, and even pubic lice. the acting was terrible, and my date complained about the music, and wanted to buy a abba CD to destroy after watching this S.O.B movie.

Dan E. gave it a4:
Great music, bad plot, bad plot and a bad plot.

Mark B. gave it a7:
What do ABBA's song of the same name, Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run", The Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby", Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and Frank Sinatra's "My Way" have in common? All of the above are famous enough that it would be forgivable to assume that they were all Number One hits, but in fact none of the above records even made Billboard's Top 20 when released! (In fact, B. J. Thomas's now-obscure cover version of "Don't Worry Baby" actually charted higher than the original!) in ABBA's case, "Mamma Mia" became the best known #32 peaker of all time largely because it became the title song of the phenomenally popular stage musical based on the international 1970s and 80s pop group's catalog. (A musical that's set, by the way, on a Greek isle, with the title tune an Italian phrase written and sung by a Swedish act. Go figure.) The movie version (and, by association, the play) are at something of a disadvantage because by nature they lack a major component that makes most of ABBA's work so catchy, distinctive and endearing--those accents on the records are so dadgum cute. But there are plenty of compensations, chiefly Meryl Streep's joyous, uninhibited acting and singing (which should once and for all put to rest the still all-too-common misconception that Streep's performances are all technique and no soul); as the middle-aged mother of the bride whose three former lovers (and her daughter's potential fathers) show up as unexpected wedding guests, Streep bravely and proudly shows her age with no heavy makeup, surgery or Vaseline on the camera, and her rendition of "The Winner Takes It All" (the one ABBA tune that takes itself way too seriously,and is therefore their worst hit) turns it into a showstopper. She gets delightful support from Stellan Skarsgaard, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski (this generation's Eve Arden) and the green-eyed heartstealer Amanda Seyfried as the bride-to-be. As for Pierce Brosnan, his attempts to belt it out are so endearingly game that let's just say that as singing Bonds go, Sean Connery in Disney's Darby O'Gill and the Little People had far more golden pipes and leave it at that. Even the occasional clunkiness that almost inevitably afflicts nearly all outdoor-set movie musicals that aren't Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or The Sound of Music (e.g. Doctor Doolittle, Man of La Mancha, Paint Your Wagon, etc.) adds to this movie's charm. It's hard not to admire Mamma Mia's nerve in wedging two dozen ABBA songs into the plot, and with less predictability than you'd expect; if you think you know what context "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" will fit in, you're probably only sort of half right. This is the ONE summer 2008 blockbuster besides Sex and the City that everyone automatically knows in advance whether they'll stand in line for or run far and fast from, but where you stand will depend on your affection for hook-promiscuous 1970s schlock-pop (I love most of that stuff). So here's the litmus test: if you hated Ron Perlman's and Doug Jones's singalong rendition of Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, then this movie will be for you the equivalent of two hours of being waterboarded, but if you ate it up, then take a chance, take a chance, take a chance-chance-chance on this!

Mamma Mia! Universal Pictures

Mamma Mia!
Universal Pictures