oy, mamma mia

[calimac]

The movie we came home from Christmas with an unexpected DVD copy of was Mamma Mia! So we watched it. To hear Pierce Brosnan sing, why else?

Look, I don't exactly dislike ABBA, not if the songs are performed with enough verve, which most of them were; and I actually kind of positively enjoy a couple of them, though apparently not the ones that everyone else does. But overall this film is a warning lesson in how lame Across the Universe could have been if it hadn't been made with the exquisite care which here was thrown to the winds.

When is this story supposed to be taking place, exactly? How old are the characters? How old are the actors playing them? How much time can the plot spend treading water? Don't think about the chronology of this film's backstory too hard, or your brain will fart.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

You're right that the timeline is weird. But Donna and her cohort were hippies probably in the mid to late '60s, when they were in their 20s; the movie is set in the mid to late '80s, when the daughter is about 20 and Donna and her pals are in their 40s (although Streep is 59, Baransky is 56, Walters is 58, Skarsgård is 57, Brosnan is 55, and Firth is the only one remotely near the appropriate age, at 48).

But I think the dialog says somewhere that Donna got pregnant at 20, doesn't it? Which hardly allows for the singing career she had before having her baby. Or am I misremembering? And Steep is gorgeous, but she doesn't look 40.

No, the timeline doesn't hold up. I liked it anyway--I adore ABBA.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

But Donna and her cohort were hippies probably in the mid to late '60s, when they were in their 20s; the movie is set in the mid to late '80s

Doesn't work. If the adults were young hippies in the 60s, that'd work in terms of the actual ages of the actors playing Donna and her pals, and be within reach for Brosnan. But if the film is taking place in the 80s, the fact that they look like they're pushing 60 (because they actually are) when they should be about 40 is grotesque.

And there are suggestions that the backstory was the 60s. Yet the men's costumes in the flashback flashes, and the women's at their reunion concert, are mid-70s glitter rock. And Harry says he gave Donna a Johnny Rotten record, which would be late 70s at the earliest. And if they're not Seventies creatures, then why are they singing ABBA?

That would put the main story in the late 90s, and it couldn't be much earlier if the daughter's fiancee is designing a web site for the hotel.

But while Colin Firth is today not quite too old for such a story set then, all the other adults still are.

The main problem is that the actors are just too old for the parts. Julie Walters would have been perfectly cast as a cackling grandmother.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

I actually kind of liked it, and it makes as much sense as many other Broadway musicals. Of which it was.

[magscanner.livejournal.com]

It takes place on a Greek island, yes; so I watched it thinking of it as a newly discovered play by an ancient Greek satyrist. [stet].

I thought it was a lot of fun. Even the music was made to fit, and I would not normally listen to ABBA.