Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

I love that I have a big family living with me in LA, because I can invite different people to see different things, and the movies fit them well. I take the right audience with me to see something. I believe in giving every single movie a chance, and who you see something with certainly has a lot to do with the experience. A lot of films, I see alone because I’m unsure walking in if it’s going to be worth ANYONE’s time. When you see three or four films a week in the theater every week, and sometimes as many as eight or nine in a week, you have opportunities to make people happy all year long.

This week, I asked my mother-in-law to go to MAMMA MIA with me. Ruth’s a great lady, sweet and smart and an amazing role model not only for my kids but for me and my wife as well. If I ever become as mellow and patient and kind as her, I will consider myself to be finished developing as a person. Since I’m not even in that ballpark yet, I love having her around to learn from. She’s a really involved and active grandmother, and because she’s at home, my wife can go to events with me sometimes. And occasionally, for the right film, I invite her instead. Two things I know for sure about Ruth’s tastes. She likes to laugh. She is a fairly easy laugh, and once she gets started, she will just keep laughing and laughing on these great hilarious rolls of laughter. Daring you to join in. And, more importantly, she is an ABBA freak. Like she loves loves loves them. And so for her, a movie like this, where it’s a musical using only ABBA music that’s a broad romantic comedy farce sort of thing... this is pretty much her DARK KNIGHT this year.

Tuesday night. Mann’s Chinese 6. Place is packed. I have never seen this crowd at a screening before. Normally, every screening I go to is a sea of familiar faces, other press, other critics. Here, it was a whole lot of gay guys and older couples. The only critics in the place I recognized were Leonard Maltin and Bill Harris. Not my typical crowd, let’s say. And I’ll say this for MAMMA MIA... it absolutely played to the house. The people in that theater had a really good time, and I’m fairly sure those people would see it again or recommend it or buy the DVD. My mother-in-law certainly will.

I think as a film, as an example of the actual art of storytelling using moving images, it’s just inept. Barely professional. I don’t think Phyllida Lloyd is meant to be a filmmaker. This is a person whose work in theater and opera and live performance is acclaimed and well-liked. She’s made a real inarguable mark on her industry, and part of that was her original production of the stage version of MAMMA MIA, which has played pretty much anywhere on the planet now that more than ten people were standing still at the same time. E V E R Y W H E R E. That’s sort of amazing when someone has that sort of success, and every version of MAMMA MIA since that first one is based on her blueprint. It must have seemed like a natural idea to bring her over to direct the film, but at some point, looking at this footage, someone should have realized that it just wasn’t working.

I remember reading one of those snide, mean, snarky books the Medveds wrote in the ’70s and ‘80s... either THE 50 WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME or THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS... and they were talking about AT LONG LAST LOVE, the Peter Bogdanovich musical with Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd. They had a still from a musical number, Reynolds and Shepherd, legs out, mouths wide open, dignity absolutely out the window. They’re all looking in different directions, and you can practically hear them dialing their agents on one line and their therapists on the other. That’s how pretty much all of MAMMA MIA feels, despite some valiant efforts from some of the cast and an admirable dedication in the face of disaster from others in the cast. For example, Amanda Seyfried is quite fetching as Sophie, the girl with the question she needs answered: who is her father?

It’s a plot lifted wholesale from an old Gina Lollobrigida film, with the ABBA songbook grafted onto it. Sophie’s getting married, and she decides to finally solve the mystery of her birth. So she reads her mother’s diary, discovers that there were three men she was sleeping with at around the same time, and invites all three to her wedding hoping that as soon as she sees her father, she’ll recognize him. This leads to much running around and singing and terrible dancing, and it’s evidently also led to a worldwide box-office total of over $100 million so far.

I’m not remotely surprised.

From the very start of the film to the very end, my mother-in-law smiled and laughed and clapped after every song, and most of the crowd around us mirrored those reactions. This film plays directly to the intended audience, people who don’t care about filmcraft at all but who simply want to feel good for a few hours in a theater. And you know what? Fine. Great. I’m glad someone makes films for that audience, too. It’s almost silly to attack the film for its technical incompetence. When you see how awful the transition from poorly-shot Greek island location to poorly-shot Pinewood Studios soundstage is handled, you realize no one gave a shit. When you see and hear Pierce Brosnan howl his way through “S.O.S.” like he’s just suffered a near-fatal testicular injury, you realize no one gave a shit. When you see how cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos shot Meryl Streep through a slice of ham for most of her close-ups, you realize no one gave a shit. I’m sort of amazed, actually, by how bad Zambarloukos’s work is. I thought his work on the remake of SLEUTH or on ENDURING LOVE was actually quite striking, but he manages to make the Greek islands ugly here, and there’s nothing remotely real about the way he shoots the soundstage stuff.

Live or die, this film is all about the songs and your affection for the cast. I like Streep quite a bit. I think she can sing her ass off, too. The ending of POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, for example, is one of my favorite scenes of hers in anything. And I think she’s a very funny lady at times. Here, she mugs too hard for most of the film, and I’m still confused about how old she’s supposed to be playing and about when the film is supposed to be set. Still, all that overacting doesn’t matter in the face of two songs, “The Winner Takes It All” and “Slipping Through My Fingers.” Those songs may be giant slices of cheese, but Streep sells the genuine emotion underneath with all the technique her career would suggest. In those moments, I can see how much Streep believed in this, and all the mugging and broad arm-flapping all seems to be an intentional choice by Phyllida Lloyd, something she actually wanted.

Christine Baranski and Julie Walters show up as Streep’s best friends, and the two of them were obviously brought in to “steal the show.” Considering how hard they both play their particular shticks, it might work, but count me out.

The three fathers fare little better, with Stellan Skarsgard smirking and leering his way through his role, Colin Firth finally allowing British stiffness to tip into full-blown nervous nelly, and Pierce Brosnan... ah, Pierce Brosnan. You know that scene in THE MATADOR that they used in all the trailers? Him walking through the hotel lobby with his gut hanging over his bathing suit, rumpled and not remotely caring? Well, that was an ode to dignity compared to the work he does here. I buy him as a credible romantic foil for Streep, but as a singer or dancer? Dear god in heaven, make it stop. It’s amazing that they released the film with his performance intact, but it’s almost so bad you have to watch.

This is a silly movie, and as a result, I expect it will play and play and play. It’s Teflon. You watch it and forget it at the same moment. The songs are the only things to really stick, and that’s because they’re already probably bouncing around in your head thanks to decades of airplay. Songbook musicals are hard to ever turn into something real and substantial, so I credit the creators of this one for knowing that up front and going the other direction entirely. Who needs competence as long as everyone smiles?

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles