Mamma Mia! (PG)

12:01am Thursday 10th July 2008

IS THERE nothing Meryl Streep can't do?

Having mastered any number of accents and garnered multiple awards for a bewildering variety of performances during one of the most envied careers in Hollywood, she's now taking on the musical.

In this big screen version of the ABBA-based West End smash-hit Mamma Mia!, she goes all girlish to play Donna, whose daughter Sophie (the very winning Amanda Seyfried) is about to be married.

But Sophie doesn't know who her father is, so she's invited the three men who are mentioned in her mother's diary around the time of her conception to turn up at their Greek island home in time for the nuptials.

Will she work out who's the daddy, and will her mother, who has been pining for a lost love for many years, eventually find happiness too?

As you'd expect from a show that was developed (by three British women, incidentally) around the songs of a Swedish pop supergroup, Mamma Mia! is relatively slight - but that has absolutely no effect on how much you will enjoy this warm, winning and really quite wonderful film.

Whether you're an ABBA fan or not - and come on, who isn't? - you'll find the appeal of this cinematic treatment impossible to resist. You could be snobby or facetious about it, but why bother, when this project is aiming to do nothing other than entertain you to the max.

We all know and possibly love the music already, and when it's added to idyllic locations and the top-notch cast, it's an irresistible mix. There are so many musical highlights, from Meryl's touching rendition of Slipping Through My Fingers as she and Amanda prepare for the wedding, through a Dancing Queen where every woman on the island joins in, to Meryl's showstopper, The Winner Takes It All.

The three possible fathers, played by Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard and Pierce Brosnan, have all been brilliantly typecast, and they seem content to shimmy around the sidelines of this female-dominated film.

Julie Walters and musical veteran Christine Baranski, as Donna's best mates, have a blast, too, providing many of the golden moments of the running time. Their Chiquitita is hilarious - you'll want to jump up and join in as they sing into cans of deodorant - and Baranski is firing on all cylinders for a buoyant Does Your Mother Know? on the beach.

Some of the lyrics have been cleverly adapted to completely relate to what's going on, but nothing that will raise the hackles of any Mamma Mia! diehard fans.

As the singing and cavorting unfolds before you, you'll experience a weird sensation that it's almost embarrassing - especially for those who can't sing, Mr Brosnan - but somehow not at all. This escapist fun will completely overwhelm any kitsch/camp alarms in your brain, which may have wanted to sound, and you'll abandon yourself entirely to its sunny onslaught of optimism.

The cast clearly had an absolute blast - and you will too.

Editor's Choice