Mamma Mia! easily ranks among the worst films I’ve ever witnessed, trailing only The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was genuinely difficult to endure. Trying to follow along, I realized it wasn't a matter of a complex plot or inattention; the movie simply didn’t seem to register with my brain. It felt like my mind was actively rejecting it. Essentially, an eccentric middle-aged woman (Meryl Streep) dances and prances around her brightly colored villa on what I believe is a Greek island. Her “Barbie Princess” daughter also dances and prances around with her. Apparently, this is their life’s work—a constant cycle of idyllic but unrealistic dancing and prancing in a villa decorated by overzealous children. They're accompanied everywhere by two friends who orbit them like satellites. Everyone in the film seems to exist solely to serve the narratives of Streep and her daughter. It felt as though everyone on screen was preoccupied with questions such as, "Will Meryl eat a tangerine now? Or perhaps a satsuma?" The daughter is getting married—the following day, I think—to an impossibly perfect man who matches her otherwise flawless existence. However, she never learned the identity of her father because her mother and she were too busy dancing and prancing for two decades to ever discuss it. So, who will give her away? She locates her mother's secret diary (with the help of her companions), which, predictably, contains all the answers. It reveals three potential fathers: Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, and Stellan Skarsgård. She invites them all to the wedding under false pretenses, and they immediately travel to the island, arriving together on a boat belonging to one of them. From there, what’s described as “hilarity” unfolds while the daughter attempts to determine her father's identity, and her mother contemplates whether to sleep with Brosnan again. They don’t discover who the father is; instead, the three men declare their love for the daughter and agree to be co-dads. Then, unexpectedly, the daughter announces at the altar that she’s calling off the wedding and will travel the world instead. To avoid wasting a wedding full of strangers, Brosnan marries Streep. Skarsgård ends up with Julie Walters—one of Streep's friends—and Firth, who turns out to have been experimenting with Streep years ago, has an affair with a local island waitress. Oh, and the ABBA songs. There are musicals, then there are musical musicals, and finally, there’s Mamma Mia!. The film contains twenty ABBA songs, including reprises, totaling eighty minutes of singing within its 109-minute runtime. After subtracting credits, that leaves a story of just nineteen minutes stretched over an hour and a half with Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn, and Anni-Frid’s music. I'm somewhat surprised I didn't completely lose it while watching this mess. The format was repetitive: an ABBA song, a few lines of dialogue (if you were lucky), another ABBA song. And the actors performed the songs live on camera; while not exceptional singers, they could mostly hold a note—with some difficulty for Streep. Except Pierce Brosnan. His singing sounded like a drunken Irishman preparing to fight. It’s possible he was intoxicated before filming or simply worried about being laughed at. The entire film is a disaster from beginning to end, resembling a direct-to-video Barbie movie enjoyed only by six-year-old girls. If given the chance to see it, avoid it entirely. Don't do what I did and watch Mamma Mia!.

Source on TMDB