Took a girl to the movies over the weekend. I asked, which film should we see? Batman or Hancock? The anticipated story of a distopic degenerate city and it's brooding lone antibody, or Will Smith snapping out of alcoholic indigency to become a super man and super hero? What a cool choice! It's win-win for me, either way. So, "Which one," I asked her?
"Mamma Mia," she replied. So, that's what we did.
Under usual conditions I wouldn't be caught dead in that theater. Voluntarily attending a movie about a wedding with singing and dancing is incompatible with the Kiwi male visage (ie stoicism and emotional repression). What you want to do instead, men, if you want to see it, is wait until someone else gets the DVD or it happens to be on TV some night in a few years time. But, I had my alabi. And, generic Kiwi masculinity is getting a bit old so I consented.
To get in, at the Regent Cinema in Christchurch, we actually enter through a door directly under the big screen to take our seats. That's a crafty way to make sure people don't sneek in, or sneek out mid-movie! I wasn't going to do that though, I was going to mock a fluffy-gushing plot shoe-horned with ABBA hits and ageing actors attempting to sing and look young again. I was looking forward with anticipatory glee to my involuntary cringing when Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth opened their pipes and played out this undoubtable comical farce! Just look at this image, especially of Streep looking young and vital! How offensive! Yeah, I can't wait for her to fall on her 59 year old ass so I can laugh at her and feel good!
It only took 5mins for the film to start gushing girly mush about boys and crushes and secret diaries and to be singing "Honey Honey." I knew that my 1hr 48min of eye-rolling was in safe hands.
And then, something else happened! We were laughing and enjoying, so was the audience. It wasn't a traffic pile-up at all, they were having fun! According to recieved lore, Streep meeting her friends at the pier with such mutual raunch could never be pulled off with the same unashamed impudence as their three younger counterparts. They're old! They can't be....liberal and...uninhibited! Several times in the film the three young girls were in the parallel setting and situation as the three older, but the film had no respect for the age difference. Young women have the right to get away with irreverent gaiety and ease of manner, their bodies are firm and sexy. Older women are supposed to retire from that, supposed to look ugly if they try. "Supposed to" went out the window.
Don't panic though, now Pierce Brosnan's going to duet with Streep singing S.O.S. That's going to crash and burn and tear this veil of delarious neotony once and for all! Ah, and Brosnan knows it too! Streep isn't going to crack, she's too good and she can sing. But 007 wont be able to hold a tune, see if his eyes flinch when we see he's a fake who cannot possibly shrug his gender role the way the girls have shrugged their generational role. Crack Brosnan, crack!
Brosnan doesn't crack!? Even when he booms out "WHEN YOU'RE GONE!" it sounds fine and he carrys it all, completely un-self-conscious (in the supposed to sense anyway). Damnit! I realise at this point that nothing can save me from enjoying this film for what it is. Brosnan slew the scrooge.
Now I'm REALLY interested in the cast interviews. Do they realise what they've done? Has such a thing ever been done before? This is right up there with Rodney Hide dancing. What transendence! Kate Rodger says Meryl Streep took the Mamma Mia role because it just sounded like too much fun. And, to embarrass her kids! She had fun alright, but I can't for the life of me manage to detect any embarrassment to be derived from Mamma Mia! nor even sustain the supply I went into the room with.
- Cross-posted from Gman Inc.