Mamma Mia!
Hot on the heels of it scooping best musical at the National Movie Awards in London on 8th September, and its star Meryl Streep being named as best actress in the nationwide poll recognizing the year’s blockbuster movies, cinemagoers across Europe are finding out - Mamma Mia! - what all the fuss is about.

Somewhere, over the rainbow, there may be someone who doesn’t know the plot, so here goes – 20-year-old Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is preparing to marry her boyfriend Sky (Dominic Cooper) at her mother's hotel on a Greek island. She seemingly has it all - a carefree life, a loving fiancé, and happy friends, but one thing is missing - a father. To fulfill her lifelong dream of being given away by her Dad at her wedding, she reads the diary of her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) and discovers that she has three possible fathers (Stellan Skarsgård, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth) – she secretly invites all three to her wedding, to find an answer before the chapel bells chime…

Taking its cue from the world’s most popular stage comedy musical (which has already earned some 2 billion dollars worldwide), the film features the music of ABBA sung by the cast members (with Brosnan apparently not being Pavarotti’s successor). Leading British theatre director Phyllida Lloyd is in her first feature-film director’s chair, and she would appear to have made a splendid first effort, if box-office receipts and (largely) favourable reviews are anything to go by. Even the customarily curmudgeonly Philip French, writing in The Observer, acknowledges being “bludgeoned into submission by the energy and exuberance and came near to embracing the camp frolics and calculated pseudo-artlessness”. That’s a rave review from old Frenchy…

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