Mamma Mia! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! More Giftset--Blu-ray, DVD Review

The set is loaded with extras, including a 32-page book, a music video, deleted scenes and the film’s complete soundtrack on CD, but all pale in comparison to the film itself.

You could spend all week eating bacon at a pig farm and still find more ham in this irrepressible, unstoppable kaleidoscope of karaoke camp gone berserk.

The movie features a cast happily mainlining the more popular offerings in ABBA’s songbook.

And what a songbook. Based on the Broadway musical of the same name, “Mamma Mia!” stars Meryl Streep as Donna, a former hippie who now toils in the hotel trade on a beautiful Greek island, where her daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), is about to have one big, fat Greek wedding when she marries the love of her life, Sky (Dominic Cooper).

Since Sophie never has met her father but wants more than anything to have him walk her down the aisle, she does a little snooping in her mother’s heated diary and finds the three men who could be that man. They are Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth), all of whom don’t know what Sophie is up to, and neither does Donna, whose face falls the moment she’s faced with her past--and all it could mean to her present.

Getting her through it are her two best girlfriends, Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters), each of whom once accompanied Tanya in being Donna’s backup singer in Donna & the Dynamos.

The rest of the plot is a whirlwind--too much to explore here, but all of which uses ABBA’s songs to tell its story. While it’s true that the film’s chronology never adds up, it’s best not to question it or the other moments of failed logic. This is a messy, shoot-for-the-moon-or-bust movie, with everyone so determined to deliver a good time, they go to great, successful lengths to do just that.


Rated PG-13. Grade: B+


View the trailer for "Mamma Mia!" here: