“Viva Mama Mia-the Movie!”

Last Sunday afternoon, I decided to invite my wife to the movies. Earlier that day, I read a good review written by columnist Rina Jimenez-David in her “At Large” column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer about the movie “Mama Mia”.  Reading her review, I thought “Mama Mia- the Movie” would be comparable to “Xanadu” – the musical which topbilled Olivia Newton-John Travolta. Xanadu is a memorable movie for me and my wife. It was such a big hit when it was shown in1981. In fact, I got the name of my eldest daughter from the character played by Olivia-Newton John in that movie – KIRA.

As a musical, I was thinking that “Mama Mia” – the movie could become another  medicine for that common malady that all of us are being affected right now – the headache caused by the  economic crisis! That it could give us the kind of entertainment as a medicine that could divert our attention even just for two hours from our present headache is an understatement. It is in fact a major surgery for all of us who are all economically affected!

The first reason for it being a major surgery is the fact that for those who belong to my age bracket (early 50’s to early 60’s) or those born from 1946 to 1956, we could easily relate to the songs of the ABBA and to Meryl Streep. ABBA and their songs were very popular during the 1970’s and 1980’s just about the time when our age bracket were in our teen age years and early 20’s, the time when we started to court, fall in love and from time to time had broken hearts.

 Originally, “Mama Mia”  is  a stage musical, and as such, the effort made to appropriately use each ABBA song for a particular situation of the story is simply amazing. When the first few lyrics of the song “Chiquitita tell me what is wrong…” was being sung by Julie Waters (Rosie) and Christine Baranski (Tanya) to ask Meryl Streep (Donna) about what seems to be her problem, the song fit like a round peg into a round hole!

Meryl Streep who I could never forget how she played the role of a lonely nay bored  housewife in the  movie “The Bridges of Madison Country”, plays Donna an ex-hippie who in her teen age years had her share of indiscretion. Aside from the fact that she does not look her age, she danced and sung her ABBA songs in a manner that could put Madonna and Britney Spears to shame!

Secondly, the choreography of the dance numbers is at par with Xanadu as far as I could recall. In fact, since the location of Mama Mia is an island, it is more captivating to watch the dance numbers against the backdrop of shimmering sea, the white sand and the rocky mountain.

Finally, I could just imagine the efforts being done in filming the movie. Easily, not less than four helicopters were put to use to get perfect aerial shots. Several cranes and other sophisticated equipments could have been brought to the Island to be used to mount the cameras to come up with such kind of technically lovely shots.

If only for these three reasons, I am highly recommending “Mama Mia” to all my contemporaries!