I must say I expected more from Meryl Streep. The other actors lived up to no expectations whatsoever. A fun plot, wonderful music, a terrible movie. The live musical was much more amusing, and the singing, dancing, and acting was actually commendable; I very much encourage anyone who is considering seeing the movie to rethink and save up for tickets to see it performed in the way it was originally intended.… Expand

Complete crap! Bubble gum that went stale a long, long time ago.

All my friends and their girlfriends and wives went and saw Dark Knight. I got dragged into seeing this with my girlfriend a few hours ago as punishment for me taking her to go see Iron Man when it first came out. Suffice to say she didnt want to see Iron Man so guess what I caught a glimpse of what hell and torture is. Basically there were only 20 people in the theater for Mama Mia and out of that 20 I'd say that 99% of them were cat loving frizzy haired old ladies. Oh and seeing Pierce "I used to be James Bond" singing some crappy songs with some old women who are my mom's age was enough to make me cringe. Eh at least one or two of the songs was good so I give it a 1.… Expand

I thought it was awful. Granted I was never an Abba fan and living in NY never saw the show but.... I have heard Meryl Streep sing better and definitely act better. And someone should shoot the casting directors for putting Pierce Brosnan in. The only talent was Sophie. Julie Waters was not used to her best ability. I couldn't figure out what the audience was laughing at. A few amusing moments but basically REFUND!… Expand

There were some great actors in this movie, but everything else was the mot bizarre piece of film work I had ever seen. It certainly seemed like everybody in the movie was having fun, but I wanted to find the nearest match so I could set the T.V. on fire. Weird as hell.

This is the WORST movie musical I've ever seen ... and I remember "Can't Stop The Music"! The writing is so wretched it sounds like it was written by a 12 year old girl and although I like ABBA's music as pop songs they do not work in a book musical. Everything is wrong with this movie but the blame is on Lloyd. Totally misdirected!

Boy, I don't understand how this could be considered good in any way. I never liked ABBA, but don't think that's the issue. Other people in the theater loved it, but neither my husband or I came out liking it.

This movie was a serious dissapointment. The 2 old bats next to Meryl Streep were hidiously horrible.

Turned it off half way. The acting is bad; the singing is horrible (really a slam against ABBA); and the choreography is infantile. The setting in Greece is beautiful. A ridiculous attempt at entertainment.

During the "Mamma Mia" number, Greek peasants crawl over the side of a building wall like extras in a Billy Idol video. And indeed, Donna(Meryl Streep) has been dancing with herself ever since Sam(Pierce Brosnan) broke her heart twenty years ago on the same Greek island she lives with her daughter Sophie(Amanda Seyfried). Now, on the cusp of her daughter's white wedding, he's back, along with two other partners from her post-Sam sex bender in "Mamma Mia", the ABBA musical that couldn't find a place for "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "Fernando". The thin storyline is just an excuse to kill the time in between songs anyway, so the omission of these two standards from the Swedish supergroup's canon seems somewhat arbitrary...and cruel(I love "Knowing Me, Knowing You", especially the "ah-haa" just before the girls launch into "there is nothing we can do"). No need to despair though, there's still "Dancing Queen", the emotional locus of "Mamma Mia", as "Fernando" was for the ABBA-centric(and superior) "Muriel's Wedding". Sung from the perspective of a middle-aged woman, "you can dance/you can jive/havin' the time of your life", Streep's winning rendition transforms this insanely catchy piece of bubble gum into an anthem for lost youth. It's like watching Stevie Nicks perform "Landslide". And then there's Pierce Brosnan's duet with Streep on "SOS", in which James Bond has the audience searching their memory banks for another example of an equally laughable singing performance(think Rob Lowe's serenading of Snow White on an Academy Award telecast from yesteryear). Since Seyfried has the strongest voice in a cast of mostly non-singers, it's a shame that she wasn't assigned to a meaty song like "Take a Chance of Me". Julie Walters' menopausal take on the formerly infectious song about love's first blush left me feeling depressed. And why does the Geico caveman("Jazz hands. Anything with jazz hands.") get better direction from his choreographer than any of the performers from a film that originated on the Broadway stage?… Expand

The play was great but I honestly hated the movie. Pierce cannot sing, (in fact i heard many audience members laughing at his singing). The acting was really just okay. The worst movie I have seen in a theater in years. Two enthusiastic thumbs down.

Bad singing, even worse acting. Totally unbelieveable characters. Meryl Streep to old to play an aging hippie with a 20 year old daughter. Only good thing about the movie was the beautiful setting.

Great music, bad plot, bad plot and a bad plot.

Save yourself 15 bucks. The movie is horribly cheesy, and I wish I would've seen the Dark Knight. Don't make my mistake.

So bad that is leaves painful after-effect. From top to bottom, a very unpleasant experience.

Perhaps my opinion is tainted because I've seen the Broadway version multiple times, but there was little to this movie that kept me interested. I found myself watching it just to see how badly it compared to the stage version. If it weren't for the fact that the movie stays fairly true to the Broadway script, this rating would be even lower.

Thought the stage play was great, think the film is terrible. IMO the type of play did not translate well. If you want to see a funny, entertaining and great feel good musical on the screen, take a turn to Hairspray.

Oh my God. Who is Ray Bennett, and how did he get a job reviewing movies? I'm so embarrassed for him, almost as embarrassed as I was watching Mamma Mia. I only give this a 2 (rather than a 1) because I was moved by the mother/daughter song. The rest of it was excruciating.

This is seriously the worst movie I have ever seen in my life by a mile. Where to begin. Why does Meryl Streep think she can sing and why would anybody let her? It is actually an insult to the music of ABBA to hear Meryl sing their songs. Pierce Brosnan is ten times worse. Christine Baranski, I love her I really do, but how long can she play the same high-society drunk? Oh look, here she's sipping hilariously from an overflowing tropically ornamented drink? Seriously, if you think that's funny, you need to get out more. In fact, shockingly, for such a song-heavy movie, you think they'd have cast, oh I don't know, singers maybe? My biggest pet peeve is the overly literal pantomiming of lyrics when singing or lip synching. For example, the American Idol kids drive me up a wall when they sing a song with the word "around" in it and they make a twirly motion in the air with a hand to suggest...you guessed it..."around". Such theatrics are redundant and insulting to the intelligence of both the lyricist and the audience. A real singer delivers a lyric vocally, not by some hackneyed game of charades. This was Mamma Mia in a nutshell: a series of casual, unpolished performances charitably characterized as karaoke, painfully re-engineered to give the semblance of tunefulness and accompanied by unnecessary hand motions which echoed the lyrics. During Dancing Queen, when they sang the lyric that goes "see that girl, watch that scene", Julie Walters actually made a circular motion with her left hand while holding her right hand in front of her face in imitation of an old-fashioned movie camera like you might do when you're playing charades. She sings "watch that scene" while pretend-cranking a camera with her hands. How juvenile. Maybe if a shred of effort had been put into developing characters beyond a cookie-cutter -- I use this adjective charitably -- plot device the movie may have had a shot at rising above the level of a 5th grade musical twice rehearsed. How long did it take for the director to come up with the idea of pretend-cranking a movie camera while flailing in a jumpsuit? About one second? Is this what ABBA is reduced to, a series of comic gestures in ironic costuming and eyeshadow? You can almost imagine the director working: "OK, here the lyric says 'I hear' so Christine, I want you to cup your hand around your ear and pretend like you're hearing a sound. OK Meryl, I know this song has nothing whatsoever to do with this contrived plot line and, frankly, I'm not even sure what your motivation is because your character is hopelessly flat and unbelievable, so much so in fact that I keep thinking to myself, 'Hey that's Meryl Streep over there', anyhow, Meryl just have your eyes brim over with tears, then midway through the song fight them back defiantly and then end with a sense of triumph over adversity. People will think you're acting and that way, we can shoehorn this song into this cockamamie plot. OK, Julie, your turn. Just cup your breasts raunchily every thirty seconds and floss random pieces of fabric and wayward costuming betwixt your legs...that's always good for a laugh. Oh, and Julie, don't forget to fall all the time. Falls are funny, right? " Everyone is always falling in the movie. During one particularly nauseating scene, Christine Baranski pounces cougar-like onto a beach hottie causing him to fall at least four times in the same musical number. Julie Walters slides down a roof and hangs on comically to a rickety eave. I am not making this up. Meryl falls through a roof, landing unconvincingly and contrivedly with her legs over her head in a yoga position: Who lands like that? You got the sense that the movie began with a limited supply of gimmicky pratfalls, quickly exhausted them and then repeated them mercilessly throughout. Why was this movie made? Certainly not out of reverence for ABBA (except in that backhanded ironic oh-isn't-it-crazy-cool-to-love-ABBA way). ABBA was better than that. Everybody associated with this movie should be banned from film-making forever.… Collapse

I like Abba, Meryl Streep, and Pierce Brosnan, but I HATED this movie! Horrible! I have walked out of exactly two movies during my lifetime (and I'm nearly 50 and I go to he movies at least once a week). I left during the Streep/Brosnan number on the mountain trail before the wedding. Horrible! Why did Brosnan do it? I'm really grieving because the crush I had on him came to a screeching (literally!) halt. Such a waste of time, money and talent.… Expand

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.

I thought the plot sucked, but the songs were wonderful. And Streep was very committed to the movie, so I gave her some bonus points and the Dancing Queen part was great. The plot just seemed very neglected and the writer should be shook. And maybe given a back handed slap.

One of the worst films I've seen in 40 yrs.Singing is terrible.I'm tired of Hollywood inserting homosexuality into movies that do not need to have any in it!!

I don't like Abba's music and I really don't like this film. How cheesy and boring the musical genre has become. How degrading this must of been for the cool and calm 007 Piers Brosnan, give the man a medal for actually singing. Give me any other film (Seriously,anything?) to watch cause this one is shocking.

Mix one part Streep, four parts Abba, and two parts fun. Stir vigorously. Baked for 2 hours. Let cool and serve cold. Very cold. Very very cold. How could so many good ingredients combine to produce what is best described as tofu? This movie was like a juggler taking 5 very shiny and mezmerizing balls and tossing them in the air one at a time - never engaging with each other, trying to convince you that some spectacular feat has just occured. Upbeat? Yes. Disjointed? Yes. The most forgettable Meryl Streep character ever? Possibly.… Expand