Phyllida Lloyd
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Billy Wilder tried the same trick with “Avanti!,” in 1972, but that felt like late Chekhov compared with this ferocious onslaught of obligatory good cheer.
And while we knew this woman of 1,000 voices could also sing – Streep handled vocal duties in A Prairie Home Companion and Postcards from the Edge with skill – turns out she's got a primo set of pipes and a fearless style of from-the-heart dancing that shows she can handle the heavy lifting required to carry a musical lead.
Watching Rock of Ages, I was reminded to one degree or another of three previous features: Mamma Mia! , Xanadu , and Showgirls .
Sure, if we're judging on the Mamma Mia! scale of basic cinematic competence, Rock of Ages is unabashedly and objectively the better jukebox musical: scenes are assembled coherently if not with the utmost clarity, and the actors have all generally been turned to point in the same direction, though Zeta-Jones and Cruise are by a criminally large margin the only people onscreen worth bothering with, largely because they are the only two who understand how to have much fun with what is, after all, a schlocky and disposable premise.
It ends up being "Mamma Mia!" with a dash of "Glee."
Not surprisingly, such tactics also made it onto Broadway, with the biggest success coming in the form of "Mamma Mia!" that took old ABBA songs and built a musical around them.
Based on the jukebox musical, the film should be a guyliner-and-leather infused version of Mamma Mia! — a light-hearted production with a vague and silly plot strung together clumsily by infectious songs that demand you sing along (this time by Poison, Def Leppard, Journey and Whitesnake instead of ABBA).
Taking a basic cue from the “Philadelphia Story” school of comedies about divorced couples giving it another shot, director Ol Parker (“Mamma Mia!
The Hollywood superstar duo have reunited onscreen for the first time since 2016's Money Monster , and brought back their swift Ocean’s 11 banter for Ticket to Paradise , the latest wedding-based destination rom-com from the director of Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again , Ol Parker.
Pero el ingenio y la pericia Parker parece haberse dispersado desde ese debut, y en su posterior filmografía asoma apenas con glamour la secuela de Mamma mía! –con menos Meryl Streep y más Lily James-, sostenida en una excusión a tierras pintorescas, los conflictos generacionales entre padres e hijos, y por supuesto el fondo del cancionero de ABBA que todavía quedaba invicto.
Love Is All You Need (2012)
Directed by Susanne Bier
influenced by Mamma Mia! (2008)
Themes Visuals Music
“Mamma Mia!” without the vocals, Susanne Bier’s lovely, silly, middle-aged romance “Love Is All You Need” gives “Mamma Mia!” leading man Pierce Brosnan a chance to shine again without all that ABBA music (we do however hear several versions of “That’s Amore”).
The temptation is impossible to resist, at first: Love Is All You Need! It’s like Mamma Mia! without the singing, and with breast cancer.
English dialogue and pic’s “Mamma Mia!”-like elements – without the Abba songs, of course – could give pic an extra B.O. bump beyond its natural specialist constituency offshore.
That the film’s central couple are a middle-aged pair only heightens the film’s sense of realism over idealism, even as Italy’s Amalfi-coast setting where much of the film transpires recalls the romantic surrounding of films such as Under the Tuscan Sun and Mamma Mia!
In the airport parking lot, she backs into Philip (Pierce Brosnan, "Mamma Mia!"), her first time meeting the groom's father, a man still taking the loss of his wife years earlier out on the rest of humanity.
Remember when you saw “Mamma Mia!” and thought it would be so much better without all the music?
"Mamma Mia!" is the debut feature film of British stage director Phyllida "Keep Your Day Job" Lloyd, but it feels more like a movie made by a karaoke machine than a human being: We're constantly being reminded what a great time the cast is having, particularly the women, as they cavort and mug before us, swinging their swishy skirts and throwing their heads back as if they truly believed they were channeling Dorothy Dandridge in "Carmen Jones."
I can already see your brow furrowing: "Hey, isn't that pretty close to the story of the little-known 1968 sex farce Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell ?"
Fletcher is channeling All That Jazz and Absolute Beginners but with a Hairspray meets Mamma Mia! high-gloss glittery shimmer, the grit and angst of the tortured artist juxtaposed against a Technicolor milieu that’s been art directed and costumed within an inch of its rockabilly heart.
Russell, who died eight years ago, would have been an ideal director for Rocketman , a musical about John that combines the jukebox format, where existing hits are strung together to tell a story, with the biopic, which asks that the story in question be at least broadly factual – a Bohemian Rhapsody as opposed to a Mamma Mia! Dexter Fletcher, who directed Rocketman and some of Bohemian Rhapsody (he stepped in when the original film-maker was fired) is a former actor whose credits include Ken Russell’s Gothic , so he’s no stranger to the far-out way of doing things.
Rocketman is also, of course, a close relation to Mamma Mia! and all those repertoire-rifling jukebox musicals that now rule the world’s theater stages.
Any major studio that gets its hands on the rights to a rock star’s music and desires to retrofit it into a movie for the fans to drive down memory lane has two options: A biopic that episodically lines up snippets of the artist’s life, like last year’s bafflingly popular Bohemian Rhapsody, or a jukebox musical that integrates the beloved hits into an original story like the gaudy Mamma Mia! or the sublime Across the Universe.
I've known people who take exception to films like Chicago and Hairspray on the grounds that their Hollywood casts aren't up to the demands of the stage-inspired choreography, and that the camerawork and editing militate against a coherent expression of physical prowess and orchestrated movement.
There's no reason this motion picture couldn't contain all the effulgence and expertise of other musical adaptations like Hairspray and Chicago, but Lloyd appears to be so blissfully ignorant of the dynamics of moviemaking that, aside from the songs themselves, there's little joy to be found in the musical numbers.
However, in the wake of “Moulin Rouge,” “ Hairspray ,” “ Chicago ” and “Across the Universe,” the movie’s old-fashioned approach just feels old-fashioned.
Although Mamma Mia is not shot with the kind of razzamatazz style a Rob Marshall ( Chicago ) might have brought, Lloyd ’s feature film debut hits the mark with zeal, enthusiasm and the gift of fun.
You won’t find any razor-sharp choreography, pitch-perfect singing, or stunning production numbers in Mamma Mia!, so if you’re looking for another Dreamgirls or Chicago, you’re out of luck.
For aficionados of such things, I should point out that this movie is not quite in the rarefied company of "Paint Your Wagon" – which featured Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin tonelessly warbling – or "At Long Last Love," which pretty much soured Hollywood on the musical genre for years.
…making Song Sung Blue’s highlights exhilarating enough for the Mamma Mia crowd…
…this heartwarming musical romance does for 1970s icon Neil Diamond what Mamma Mia did for Abba…
No obstante, ha servido de inspiración para construir historias basadas en las canciones de bandas famosas, séase desde el idilio de una joven por encontrar la identidad de su padre bajo el compás de ABBA en Mamma Mia! (2008) o el tributo a The Beatles tras la pérdida de memoria de la población global sobre su existencia en Yesterday (2019).
This is not another song-and-dance revue like Mamma Mia! or another misconstrued ode to the power of pop like Yesterday; there’s way more Springsteen here than there is Beatles in that other movie, for one thing.
Cue her best pals and backup singers rambunctious Rosie (Educating Rita's Julie Walters, showing a real talent for physical comedy) and thrice-married tigress Tanya (Christine Baranski of TV's Cybill) who have come to the island for some pre-wedding partying.
Hunky Colin Firth (Pride and Prejudice) brings a thin yet pleasing singing voice to uptight Brit banker Harry, who discovers his inner satyr beneath the Greek sun, making an eyebrow-raising transformation.
Colin Firth may have caused women to swoon when he played Mr. Darcy, but that's probably because he didn't sing in Pride and Prejudice .
Set in 1973 and inspired by both his own memories and the life of producer Gary Goetzman ( The Silence of the Lambs , Philadelphia , Mamma Mia! ), Anderson’s sweetest, most nostalgic effort to date bases itself teenage hustler and child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a startling debut performance).
This is based on the childhood of Gary Goetzman, the child actor who went on to produce such films as The Silence of the Lambs , My Big Fat Greek Wedding , and Mamma Mia!
Gary Goetzman, on whim the character is based, is hugely successful as a producer, partnered with Tom Hanks, with their biggest financial success being Mamma Mia!, a show and movie led by and about women.
While I’m usually very much team Meryl Streep, she’s entirely more enjoyable and interesting to watch singing ABBA’s music in 2008’s campy and mixed-reviewed “Mamma Mia!”.
After "Mamma Mia!" and "Into the Woods," it's not news that Streep is an excellent singer and, having learned to play the guitar for this film, she really tears into standards like "American Girl," "Wooly Bully" and "Keep Playing That Rock 'n' Roll."
As she demonstrated in A Prairie Home Companion, Mamma Mia! and Into the Woods, Streep is a strong and joyful singer.
Her vocal talents have never been fully exploited in movies other than in “Mamma Mia!” and more recently “Into the Woods” so she’s perfect for playing a guitar-shredding mama living the rock ’n’ roll dream.
At best, Ricki and the Flash is a schmaltzy feel-good mediocrity where the major selling point is Meryl Streep as an aging rocker (as if Mamma Mia! wasn’t enough of Streep and pop music).
Streep sings several numbers, as she has onscreen in everything from "Ironweed" to "Postcards from the Edge" to "A Prairie Home Companion" to mega-hit "Mamma Mia!"
How she agrees to a makeover, including voice lessons worthy of The King’s Speech, to run for leadership of the Conservative Party, an office even she never thought a woman could win.
The effect is like watching a new kind of genre - the political rom-com, with Denis and Margaret courting to a Rodgers and Hammerstein score, and later with the leading lady even getting her own makeover, in this case a sequence reminiscent of "The King's Speech," wherein she loses her querulous trill, fixes her hair and streamlines her look.
…similarities to last year’s “The King’s Speech.”
In some ways, The Iron Lady provides an ironic counterpoint to last year’s much-honored The King’s Speech.
Scheduled for general theatrical release sometime in December (I reviewed a screener submitted by a publicist for the 2011 NYFCO awards meeting), “The Iron Lady” has all the trappings of your typical fawning biopic of the rich and the powerful in line with “The King’s Speech”.
While non-UK audiences may not be all that conversant with 20th century British politics, we’ve had no problem following the history that underpins such recent films as The Queen and The King’s Speech.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Double Dad feels like Mamma Mia! meets Eat, Pray, Love , a fish-out-of-water story with a wholesome hunt for truth.
As “Who’s your Daddy?” comedies go, this one is a lot more “My Two Dads” than “Mamma Mia!” — sitcom lame.
Also more than holding their own are Christine Baranski ( The Grinch ) and Julie Walters ( Calendar Girls ) as Donnas old friends, the other members of Donna and the Dynamos, their former trio.
So, when an actress like Meryl Streep chose to do Mamma Mia! and people were aghast, I was thrilled because it felt like a project she wanted to do, rather than one she felt she had to.