More Mama Mia
Dec. 24th, 2008 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agoodwinsmithI very much am enjoying Mama Mia. What they've done with the old ABBA songs is quite funny, and I think the all the acting bods do a very fine job of wringing every last bit of silly from the lyrics and situations. I am quite fond of Christine Baranski's turn.
I thought it was clever to set the events in Greece, since we have all the Greek tragedies of children doing unfortunate things because they did not know their parents.
It also made me think of a movie I had seen a long time ago in the late 60's:
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062767/
Only, in that movie, each man thinks the girl is his, and has done so from the start - but even then went home and married the girl next door. The funny - haha - is that all three decide to visit their daughter at the same time. The daughter was not an active player in the events of the story, but rather the platform on which all the pratfalls occurr. She ends up in the hospital at the end (there's a happy ending, but still).
One of the things I think is fun about Mama Mia is that the chronology is totally wacky. If the daughter is 20 in 2008, there is no way that her parents conceived her during the flower-power era. Okay, yes, verisimilitude is not a prime factor in this flick, but I actually think it works to the story's advantage - it becomes mythic.
Why do fatherless daughters get a choice of three possible dads?
I thought it was clever to set the events in Greece, since we have all the Greek tragedies of children doing unfortunate things because they did not know their parents.
It also made me think of a movie I had seen a long time ago in the late 60's:
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062767/
Only, in that movie, each man thinks the girl is his, and has done so from the start - but even then went home and married the girl next door. The funny - haha - is that all three decide to visit their daughter at the same time. The daughter was not an active player in the events of the story, but rather the platform on which all the pratfalls occurr. She ends up in the hospital at the end (there's a happy ending, but still).
One of the things I think is fun about Mama Mia is that the chronology is totally wacky. If the daughter is 20 in 2008, there is no way that her parents conceived her during the flower-power era. Okay, yes, verisimilitude is not a prime factor in this flick, but I actually think it works to the story's advantage - it becomes mythic.
Why do fatherless daughters get a choice of three possible dads?
