It was a MUSICALS weekend at the Fortress of Ineptitude as the family
gathered to watch two movie musicals this weekend. Both movies were jukebox musical
romantic comedies with two word titles ending in an exclamation point. But they
could not be more differerent.
On Saturday, we watched Mamma Mia!, a 2008 movie based on the1999 stage musical based on the songs of ABBA.
As a lifelong fan of ABBA since the days of my kidhood, oddly enough, I had
never seen Mamma Mia! live or on screen. But I stumbled upon it on
Netflix Saturday night and I figured, why the hell not? I convinced Andrea and
Randie to give it a go.
Meryl Streep plays Donna Sheridan, a single mother whose daughter Sophie
(Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married. Sophie would like her father to walk
her down the aisle at her wedding. Except she doesn’t know who her father is.
But thanks to her mother’s diary, she’s able to narrow down the list to three
men: Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgård). So
Sophie sends out wedding invites to these three guys, hoping when they arrive,
she can suss out who her real dad is.
They do arrive but she can’t pin down which of these guys is her real
dad.
Oh, and Donna really doesn’t want any of these guys there.
So hilarity ensues.
Mamma Mia! is, to be blunt, a silly and contrived trifle.
But it is a silly and contrived trifle that we all got a kick out of watching. It’s
a screwball comedy but with heart, driven by the infectious melodies of ABBA tunes.
Meryl Streep comports herself well as the aging pop star/flower child running a
rag tag resort on a Greek island. (The island setting for this movie is gorgeous.)
Her singing is quite good. Christine Baranski who plays a friend of Donna’s
does a wicked cover of Does Your Mother Know?. And Amanda Seyfried does a very
good job with her ABBA songs. The biggest weakness in terms of singing is Pierce
Brosnan; it looks like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone every time he sings;
sounds like it too.
The three of us had a lot of fun watching this movie. I was worried
that it might be too light a confection to appeal to my teenage daughter but I’ll
be damned, the next day, Randie was looping ABBA songs on her phone.
If Mamma Mia! was a pleasant daydream of a movie, the next
musical we watched Sunday evening was a fevered dream skirting the edges of nightmare.
From
2001, Moulin Rouge! is the story of Christian (Ewan McGregor), a young English writer, who
falls in love with Satine (Nicole Kidman), a cabaret actress and courtesan, the
star of the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Although set in the year 1899, the movie
employs pop songs from the mid-to-late 20th century.
The set design is abstract, diverging off from reality. Camera
angles swoop and change with extreme closes up interchanging quickly with panoramic
shots. Lighting moves from color infused brightness to washed out hues draped
in shadows. Moulin Rouge! is
a wild ride of shifting tones and perspectives, not just in how it looks but
the story it tells. Scenes of broad comedy give way to scenes of sadness.
Christian warns you up front, narrating after the fact
from the year 1900, telling you who is dead. When that death arrives in the narrative,
no amount of warning dulls the impact.
Moulin Rouge! is an emotionally challenging film, building up a powerful tale of passion
and romance, of the giddy heights of what it is like to find love and be loved
in return, knowing that love is doomed to a tragic end.
If one dances away under a sun dappled sky from Mamma Mia!, one can only walk away under a grim
grey sky, shoulders hunched down against a cold wind from Moulin Rouge!, exhausted by the spectacle and brought low by
the death of a love that can never be again.
Whoa.
That’s heavy.
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