Mamma Mia!: How Can You Resist It?

-- Trish Bendix from AfterEllen.com

 

When the Swedish quartet ABBA was performing pop songs like "Dancing Queen," I wonder if they visualized the phenomenon it would become. From their dance hits came a Broadway musical, Mamma Mia!, and now a film of the same name, starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried.

The film had its world premiere in Berlin on Wednesday night, and the cast (which also includes Christine Baranski, Colin Firth, and Pierce Brosnon among others) was in attendance for the showing and the after party. If you have yet to see the trailer, it will give you a good idea what we can expect when it opens here on July 18:

 

 

Yes, that is Meryl Streep singing, and she seems to have some pipes. But we are all aware how frighteningly amazing Ms. Meryl is; it's Amanda Seyfried that is the breakthrough star of Mamma Mia. Up until now, she has served as part of ensemble casts on Big Love and in films such as Mean Girls and Alpha Dogs. As 18-year-old Sophie Sheridan, Seyfried seems like a shoo-in for good reviews, no matter what the outcome is for the film in its entirety.

 

 

If you were never an ABBA fan (which really seems quite impossible), Mamma Mia! seems like it could still be a fun summer flick to check out. Something tells me it might be hard to sit still and keep from singing along in the theater, though. Perhaps I will steer clear of seeing it in a theater close to Boystown.

But if you are into going to the theater that is of the musical variety (read: Broadway), the show is still open in New York City. Tickets might be hard to come by after the film comes out, though, so take your chance in Logo's contest for you to bring your Mamma (or anyone else of your choosing, but wouldn't she appreciate it?) to see it with you in the Big Apple.

 

Comments

[David Benkof]

I think it's really interesting that gay men especially have flocked to see the musical and movie versions of Mamma Mia! and I'm one of the few who have actually noticed the most important - and socially relevant - theme of the show: girls need their fathers. Sophie grew up longing for a Dad, and wants desperately to have him give her away at her wedding. Yes, some girls don't have a father because of a tragedy. But Sophie never knew her father because her mother (admittedly, a fabulous Meryl Streep) was an angry feminist who insisted she could do everything herself, hurting her own child as a result. And no, a second mother could not have filled the father-hole in Sophie's life, no matter how butch she may have been.

I wish gay people left the theater humming the ABBA tunes but also determined to pressure same-sex couples out of baby-making and toward adopting instead, thus providing two parents to a child that would have had none, instead of selfishly denying their own children a Mom, or a Dad - an act that is only more cruel because it is performed on one's own offspring.

As gay and lesbian people, we can be more moral than we have been in the past. We can put the needs of children above our own selfish obsession with being "equal." I mean, the message is right there in a cultural product that resonates with our sensibility. See that girl. Watch that scene. And let's try to incorporate more morality and other-orientedness into our lives, while staying as queer as ever.