Posted on 08/23/2009 2:32:27 PM PDT by Fishtalk
"Mama Mia" is an okay musical, probably not for our heterosexual brethren. It does feature pop music from my era, has beautiful scenery, great acting, intriguing characters.
Two things, "Dancing Queen" will roll around in your head for a month after seeing it and the plot line, folks, it's really, really uncomfortable.
(Excerpt) Read more at fishmoviereviews.blogspot.com ...
It was OK, just not my type of story. My Mom loved it.
Well I wrote the critique so thank you for that.
Obviously you took exception to Streep’s age but this reviewer did not. This does NOT make it a bad review although, obviously, your mileage may vary.
I am intrigued by your second criticism mostly because I thought, perhaps wrongly, that the singing was lip-synced.
So far as I know, Streep is no singer nor is Brosnan. I figured they were lip-syncing but again, I reviewed it and the singing didn’t offend me so much as it did you.
I’d argue that just because the same things that offend you don’t offend a reviewer does NOT make it a bad review. I had great problems with the plot line and expressed them. The things that bothered you didn’t bother me. You are not the arbiter of the world.
But I’m sure not going to argue with you. Obviously you are entitled to think what you will.
Moving on....
Let me apologize right now to the many fellows posting here who express a love for musicals.
Apologizing, of course, if my assertion that most men don’t like musicals offends you as it was not meant to.
In fact, well how come I never met a guy who liked musicals?
Although my husband did like CATS...so maybe I paint with too broad a brush.
A guy who likes musicals is a gem indeed.
I loved JC Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Little Shop of Horrors, AIDA....well you know.
Who said it was?
It is posted under Bloggers and Personal under the categories MUSIC and MOVIES.
Why have these categories if one can only post newsworthy stuff? Which I do, by the way, quite often.
You’ve been a Freeper quite a while. How come you know so little about the site?
Exactly. The music is one thing. The plot is something else entirely.
A classic.
There were definitely some snafus in the movie. There are many of us who survived the '70's, as they say, who can relate to much of what occurred in the storyline. I always take something away from fables and cautionary tales, though. Even those which are poorly executed.
This piece of tripe movie is rolling through all the HBO-Cinemax-Showtime channels on satellite and I watched it once.
I saw everything you listed and agree with you. PLUS I do not think more than one song was sung well. The rest were sung badly.
The whole thing looked like it was quickly cobbled together and the only criteria for the movie was something to bash marriage, heterosexuality, and conservative personal values.
Uh-uh. The scene in the principal’s office in “Porky’s” is the funniest scene in a movie. ;-)
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/bill_bass/index.html
The “relatively true” part isn’t exactly so. When the film was screened for the Von Trapp family, they were rolling in the aisles in laughter because it was anything but the reality. The names of the children were largely changed, the age difference between Baron Georg and Maria was rather wide... and worse than that, the personalities were completely reversed. It was Maria that was the controlling martinet and Georg was far more fun-loving. Maria even locked up one of the daughters to keep her from seeing a boy. It was actually the scene of Liesl and Rolf “16 going on 17” that really set off the family hysterics at the screening, as the eldest daughter was nothing like that and Maria would’ve never permitted such behavior.
When Robert Wise made the film, he played up a lot of the political aspects, the Anschluss, and there was no dramatic escape from Austria as such, they literally just went down to a train, IIRC, and left. No big whoop.
Better put.
Musicals were very popular at one time. IMHO, “Fiddler on the Roof” was the best. I’m a woman, but I think men who were my father’s age enjoyed those types of musicals back in the old days. That was good stuff back then. But, I myself haven’t watched a musical made since then. And my husband won’t watch anything unless it has explosions and gunfire, which tends to limit my options here... lol.
Wow, your take on this musical was very different from the other posts here. I never watched this musical, and I have no intention of watching it. But, in reading the descriptions here in the posts complaining about the plot, I was thinking there seems to be an underlying pro-life message in it. Of course, the other problems with the plot do sound overwhelming.
Yes, it sure is. The stage production was much better than the movie. Same with Grease and Hairspray. I didn't even listen to ABBA music in the seventies; still, I enjoyed the campiness of those wild fashions that were included in both productions. The seventies were often out-of-control zany, and Mama, Mia! captures it well.
OK, kinda knew something was wrong, but so much of it? Neat to know that the Von Trapps laughed at it. Some real stories are just average— Hollywood- does it every time. Thanks for the info! The songs are good though, mostly.
Well, in this case, it was Broadway, since they did the stage play first before the film. I actually hatched an idea for a sequel to TSOM and was going to pitch it to Robert Wise on the spot, but I figured he’d only have probably heard about 10,000 pitches for such a story... (my idea was set in Vermont, where the real Von Trapps settled in America, this time setting it in ‘65 when the film came out, 27 years after the original took place).
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