Who doesn’t love a feel-good movie? They can cheer you up, reinforce your mood or simply entertain and relax, so it’s no wonder these multi-purpose films are such perennial favourites.
But some are in a league of their own, bringing sunshine into our lives, whatever the circumstances. And one of the handful with a guarantee to make you feel good has arrived on Netflix in the US today [Wednesday, July 16] to put a smile on your face. It’s Mamma Mia!.
It doesn’t matter whether you like musicals or not. This is a film that is hard to resist for more reasons than ABBA has had hits. The location itself couldn’t be more perfect — a Greek island, all white buildings, blue domed roofs with skies to match and non-stop glorious sunshine. Meryl Streep’s Donna runs a tourist villa while raising her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who, at twenty, has never known the identity of her father.
Discovering an old diary, she uncovers that there are three possible candidates and decides to invite all of them to her forthcoming wedding. She’s convinced she’ll know instantly whether it’s Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) or Harry (Colin Firth) while Donna is more than a little surprised to see three faces from her past, two of whom seem to have been mere one-nighters.
Not the most original of plots, for sure, but it’s one that’s the perfect fit for the characters and, more importantly, the format. This is the jukebox musical to end all jukebox musicals — think Jersey Boys (2014), Rocketman (2019) or Sunshine On Leith (2013) — where the narrative is built around a selection from a famous music back catalogue.
In this case, it belongs to Swedish supergroup ABBA, which means a collection of catchy favourites, with many of them tied into specific scenes in the movie. So Donna’s friend Rosie (Julie Walters) flirts with Bill at a wedding reception and the song is, inevitably, “Take A Chance On Me”. Or “The Winner Takes It All” is the background to a confrontation between Donna and Sam about their past. Contrived?
Certainly! It’s also pure cheese, and we love it for that.
The title song was released 50 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1999 that the stage musical version of Mamma Mia made its debut in London’s West End. It’s still playing there now, but at a different theatre. It opened in New York two years later and, since that first performance, has played in more than 40 different countries around the world.
The film sang and danced its way onto cinema screens in 2008, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who had taken up the chair for the original London stage production.
With takings at the international box office of $611.2 million, it’s the highest-grossing movie based on a Broadway musical and also had the fifth-highest takings around the world during its year of release. 2008 was, of course, the year of The Dark Knight.
Critics weren’t especially kind to the film, especially when it came to the plot. The cast, who all gamely did their own singing, came off a little better. Streep, we knew, could warble with the best of them, but the Brosnan/Firth/Skarsgard combo was in the line of fire from day one. Skarsgard had admitted he couldn’t sing — or dance either — but was reassured that he wasn’t alone in that. He knew Firth and Brosnan were in the same boat, but it was the latter who was mercilessly pilloried for his strained vocals. Yet the very fact that his efforts were, to put it kindly, not very good somehow seemed to ramp up the enjoyment.
But, while the film has never been able to shake off those shortcomings, they never stopped audiences falling completely under its spell. When it arrived in cinemas, it already had a ready-made audience made up of diehard ABBA fans and everybody who’d seen the show on stage and loved it. At the same time, it was bringing the songs to a new generation and essentially growing another audience at the same time.
What really appealed, and gave it that all-important feel-good factor, was that it was an unashamed piece of squeaky clean escapist fun, full of romance and colour. Just under two hours of unadulterated sunshine. Forget the weather outside: whether it’s warm and summery or a gloomy winter’s day, all you need to make you feel good is Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia! is now on Netflix in the US. It’s available to buy from Prime Video and various sites in the UK. See our best movies on Netflix guide for more movies to enjoy.