Mamma Mia! (2-Disc Special Edition) – DVD Review

Film, Reviews, Top Story



If Pierce Brosnan truly wanted to distance himself from his days as James Bond, Mamma Mia! is it. With a singing voice that sounds something like a wombat gargling razor blades, Brosnan truly has left Bond behind as he zealously embraced a lead role in a musical based off of ABBA songs. Sean Connery, eat your heart out.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is getting married to Sky (Dominic Cooper) and wants to be given away by her father. Not ever having known him, as she was raised solely by her mother Donna (Meryl Streep), she decides to do something daring. Seeing that she was seeing three different men around the time she was conceived, she invites them all to her wedding. Sam (Brosnan) is an American architect who was Donnas true love for a brief moment, then went away to marry someone else. Harry (Colin Firth) is a British banker with questionable fashion sense in his youth who happened to be a rebound fling. Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) is a Swedish writer who also had a passion filled moment with Donna. When all three take Sophie up on her invitation, and all three wind up together on the same boat to get to the Greek island Sophie lives on, things become overtly complicated as Sophie doesnt know which man is her father (and each one ends up thinking he is). Throw in some ABBA songs and you have one of the more fun, if head shaking, films of the year.

Released the same weekend as The Dark Knight, the highest grossing film of the past decade and second of all time, the amazing thing about Mamma Mia! is that it still managed to draw a huge audience. Clearing over $140 million at the box office just in the U.S, making it the third most successful musical of all time behind Chicago and Grease, it managed to find an audience when the biggest film of the decade opened up at the same time.

The films real magic is in its lead, Amanda Seyfried. The only one of the cast with true musical talent, she opens the film with the spotlight on her and doesnt disappoint. Singing most of the films big numbers, Seyfried dominates a screen with much bigger name actors on it. While its kind of a sad celebrity drunken karaoke when Streep, Firth, Brosnan, and other big names start trying to sing famous ABBA songs, Seyfried shines in the same way Emmy Rossum shone in 2004s Phantom of the Opera. Its unexpected and she carries the film; if she didnt have any musical talent the film would completely fail because someone has to do more than just warble songs.

Most of the rest of the cast are talented performers but not good singers. Brosnan stands out because his singing voice is atrocious, but he gets the character down well. The same can be said of the rest of the cast, most of whom have many accolades, as this is a talented cast that does well enough but fails when it comes to the singing aspect. It makes for a film that has a lot of infectious fun but some painful musical numbers. Its not a disservice to ABBA, as the music is serviceable for the most part and roaring fun constantly, but it isnt as good as the originals obviously.

Mamma Mia! will ultimately go down as a hit film that opened in the shadow of one of the decades better films, but its incredible fun and one the better cinema going experiences of the year.

Presented in a Dolby Digital format with a widescreen presentation, Mamma Mia! looks and sounds terrific. This is a visual and audio wonder, as the film looks and sounds terrific on DVD.

A two-disc collection, the DVD release comes with a Digital Copy that you can upload onto a computer.

The film comes complete with a Sing Along feature that allows you to see the lyrics of each song so you can sing along, obviously, or at least figure out what Pierce Brosnan is warbling about.

The Making of Mamma Mia! The Movie is a look at how the film translated from the stage to the silver screen. Wanting to preserve the play as long as they could, they resisted making it into a film for a long time but finally opted to make it into a film when they were able to bring the creative staff behind the play to the film. Its mainly a puff piece, broken into three parts, but there are some interesting moments. One is when everyone starts discussing how the cast did all of their own singing and the amount of work put into it; its interesting to see and hear veteran actors like Brosnan and Streep discuss how they listened to ABBA hours everyday to prepare and how many of them trained for weeks and months to learn how to sing at a level sufficient for the film.

Anatomy of a Musical Number: “Lay All Your Love on Me”is a look at the behind the scenes of the films big number between Cooper and Seyfried. Its interesting to see how much work goes behind the scene, as apparently all of the romantic aspects behind it were nonexistent because of how cold it was on the Greek beach.

Becoming a Singer is a piece on the singing specifically. Given recording pieces to put in their ears that would record their vocals on the set, it allowed them to separate audio tracks and be able to have them record them in a studio to place them at their best in the film.

Behind the Scenes with Amanda is a piece following around Seyfried on the set doing various things to prepare for filming.

On Location in Greece is a piece on how the films location. Having shot in Greece because no place else could (or would) do for the film, it being a film about a Greek family in Greece, the piece features the cast and crew reflecting on what it was like to film in Greece.

A Look Inside Mamma Mia! The Movie is an EPK piece about the film.

A Music Video for “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A man after midnight)” is included. It can also be found in its entirety on Youtube.

The requisite Deleted Scenes and Outtakes are included as well as a Deleted Musical Number, “The Name of the Game.”

The film also has a Commentary Track, this one from Director Phyllida Lloyd.

If The Dark Knight represented the darkest part of the evening before the dawn of the summer movie season, Mamma Mia! represents the suns peaking in mid-day. A whole lot of fun wrapped in sometimes unintentionally hilarious celebrity karaoke, the two disc edition has a lot to it but most features arent really worth the extra money. You could basically just put a little sticker on the single disc that says “everyone tried really hard and sung their hearts out” and 90% of the special features would be irrelevant. Definitely worth the viewing, but unless youre a monster fan of the film go for the single disc edition.

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Universal presents Mamma Mia!. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski. Written by Christine Johnson. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated PG-13. Released on DVD: 12.16.2008. Available at Amazon.