Oh, the modern movie-musical. It seems that this genre has been hit or miss for quite some time. This is easy to understand because it is very easy go wrong with adapting a popular Broadway hit. You can make the film too much like the stage production and appear stagey and gimmicky or you can take too many artistic liberties and risks, drawing the ire of loyalists and getting “too weird” for general audiences. Somewhere in the middle lies the elusive perfect combination of the two. Mama Mia! does not fall into any of these categories.
The subject matter of Mama Mia! is tame stuff when compared to some of the more dramatic productions Broadway has churned out in the past. Young Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) is getting married and she wants her father to walk her down the aisle. There is just one small problem with this- she doesn’t know who her father is. After snooping through her mother’s old diary, she narrows her search down to three possible candidates and invites all of them to her wedding in the hopes of sorting it out before the ceremony without her mother finding out. The men arrive earlier than expected and are surprised to learn that they are all possibly the bride’s father. Sophie’s mother (Meryl Streep) is equally surprised when she is confronted with her three former lovers.
All of this is set to the disco-tastic music of ABBA. Some songs work better than others but, on the whole, it’s rather evident that the songs were inserted around the story or the story written specifically with a song in mind. Some of the musical numbers feel more forced than others and the musical as a whole feels more manufactured than organic. Such seems to be the case with so-called ‘jukebox musicals.’ Interestingly enough, two former members of ABBA wrote the stage musical. This solidifies my belief that musicians should stick to what they’re best at.
To be fair, Mama Mia! isn’t a bad musical. In fact, it’s good to the point of entertaining you with jokes and songs aplenty. The downside is that this is a very safe production. It rarely makes you think and doesn’t make much of a statement about anything. Movie-musicals don’t necessarily have to do any of these things but I enjoy it when they do. Mama Mia! is pure sugar frosting. Nothing dynamic; nothing powerful. Just a cute, harmless puff piece that occupies less than two hours of your time.
Seyfried is charming as Sophie and really portrays the innocence of the character well. Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth provide plenty of give and take humor as Sophie’s three befuddled potential fathers. As long as one of these three is on screen, Mama Mia! is at its funniest. Meryl Streep works as Sophie’s quasi-scatter brained mother but her two friends (Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) have a tendency to go over the top. Maybe I feel this way because I am a man and don’t appreciate catty, corny female humor as much as others, but the women of Mama Mia! had me rolling my eyes more than rolling on the floor.
Simply put, you could do a lot worse than Mama Mia! It gets the job done in that it entertains you and doesn’t drag on in too many places. This easy, breezy aspect comes at a price though- the film never really leaves its mark on you. Fun and forgettable is fine because it is fun. But it is still forgettable.
I would have thought such an abrupt about face would defy the laws of physics, but somehow they did it. The James Bond series goes from ‘awesome’ to ‘suck’ and we’re left wondering what the heck happened. Incredibly stupid plot points abound in this stinker.
Take a villain who doesn’t feel pain because of a bullet lodged in his head, which is still slowly moving through his brain and will eventually kill him for example. Or how about a supposedly wicked hot babe who is not only a super-intelligent nuclear physicist, but also trained in several hand-to-hand combat techniques? Turned off yet? You should be.
There’s a feeble effort to include a double-cross and some romantic flings, but the whole thing is a mess and basically turned into background noise while I counted all the cracks in my ceiling. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the film is bad. By all means, it’s perfect for Bond fans stuck in the 70’s Roger Moore frame of mind and for those in the general population who like to turn their brains off until the credits roll. The fact that it’s good for some (and sadly, many) people means the movie is just okay. Its middle-of-the-stack rating is validated by the fact that the film at least resembles a Bond flick; just not a good one.
I really liked this film. It surprised me, I have to admit. I remember when Teri Hatcher was the “it girl” because of her role as Lois Lane on The New Adventures of Superman. This will spoil the movie for some of you, but to use her as a seemingly important Bond girl only to kill her off half way through was a very bold decision. The fact that she was ordered dead by her husband (the main villain) was equally surprising and I appreciated the boldness.
A lot of boldness strikes you with Tomorrow Never Dies. For the first time, the villain is very contemporary and not the stereotypical drug dealer, madman bent on world domination, or a Russian. The villain is a media mogul plotting to launch Britain and China into a war with each other, creating top subject matter for his new international news network, thereby making him the most powerful man in media and very, very rich.
True to form, Bond catches wind of this and uses all his charm and suavity to get information from said villain’s wife that helps him stop the war between two nations. While this plot is somewhat recycled (think You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me), the contemporary nature of the setup is appreciable. Bond teams up with a Chinese agent and they stop the bad guy (as if a Bond film would end any other way?).
Some very good stunt work really ups the ante for the series and really works the adrenaline; less gadgetry than GoldenEye helps root the film in reality; and the villain’s profession reflects the changing of the times and is well within the realm of plausibility. Tomorrow Never Dies asserts that just about anyone can be a villain, which is fine with me, as long as James Bond is on the case.
Production issues and legal troubles delayed the production of this, the 17th official entry in the James Bond series. By the time it was made, 007’s greatest adversary, the Soviet Union, had collapsed. The writers took this into account, creating some interesting lines, but they still decided that Mother Russia was their best and most serviceable foe.
Renegade remnants of the USSR hijack a satellite weapon (this marking the THIRD time such a plot has been used) and threaten to wreak havoc with it. Enter Bond to the rescue. Pierce Brosnan fills in the tux for this go-around and he handles himself rather well. Judi Dench as Bond’s boss M also handles him very well, rightly keeping Bond in check and reminding him that the Cold War is over.
Overall, the film is a mixed bag. There’s lots of action and stunts, but the return of over-the-top gadgets, a recycled plot device and a bizarre bad girl (who gets sexual thrills from suffocating people between her thighs) holds it back from being one of the better Bond films. Surprisingly, despite being made in the mid 90s, GoldenEye has a very 80s look and feel to it.
An interesting subplot nearly develops, with Sean Bean playing a turncoat British agent masterminding the whole operation. Sadly, Sean Bean doesn’t exactly fill the role of a genius mastermind very well. He can play villain, sure, but super-smart villain? Not so much. I was also thrown off by the villain having a back story motivating him to do evil things, because Bond villains are usually just evil guys. Trying to rationalize and make us sympathize with the villain’s painful past may be a product of 90s emphasis on psychobabble and being in tune with everyone’s feelings. Stupid hippie talk I say, but hey, GoldenEye is a popcorn flick, and not too bad a one at that.
Oh, the modern movie-musical. It seems that this genre has been hit or miss for quite some time. This is easy to understand because it is very easy go wrong with adapting a popular Broadway hit. You can make the film too much like the stage production and appear stagey and gimmicky or you can take too many artistic liberties and risks, drawing the ire of loyalists and getting “too weird” for general audiences. Somewhere in the middle lies the elusive perfect combination of the two. Mama Mia! does not fall into any of these categories.
