Mamma Mia is obviously very light fair. There’s no need to see it if you don’t like ABBA songs, and even if you do you should also not have anything against silly musicals with almost no story. This film makes Grease look like the Brothers Karamazov.

When I saw Mamma Mia on Broadway, I really didn’t care for it very much. I didn’t hate it, but it just left me a little cold. I thought the story was dumb and that the ABBA songs, while undeniably great as pop songs, really didn’t work as Broadway numbers, no matter how earnestly they tried to make them work. I saw Mamma Mia the movie at an outdoor showing of the film’s sing-a-long version. I enjoyed it immensely and can report that they fixed a lot of the problems with the musical version.

First: Meryl Streep. I am not a Meryl Streep fan. But this is a side of Meryl Streep that is not on film very much. Not only can she sing, she is quite musical in her delivery of these fantastic ABBA songs. Her lip syncing (to her own voice) is fabulous and very convincing. Plus she is relaxed, loose, funny, silly, happy, and has never looked more beautiful in her life. You could fall in LOVE with Meryl Steep watching this movie. And I have to hand it to her: it really takes something to lip sync  “The Winner Takes It All” to Pierce Brosnan, on a rocky Mediterranean coastline, in the middle of a hammed-up movie musical based entirely on corny pop songs, and have it basically work.

Second: The Men. In the musical, the three fathers were just generic actors. Here, they are they warm and attractive stars with great voices: Stellan Skarsgard, Peirce Brosnan, and Colin Firth. Their star presence alone just smooths over the minimalist storyline and makes it palatable, so you can get on with enjoying the main point of the film (to listen to ABBA songs, of course.) But they also each approach their minimally-written roles with great warmth, care and naturalness. They must of had a ton of fun doing this film to bring this much genuine warmth to these roles.

(I might add that Christine Baranski – who really is a Broadway singer – and Julie Walters are terrific too. Amanda Seyfried is tolerable in a generic Disney kind of way. )

Third: The singing. As far as I could tell (the sound was not ideal at this outdoor venue,) under most of the songs they snuck in a backing track of either the original ABBA voices, or voices very similar to the original ABBA voices.  This corrected a big problem with the musical, which was that the ABBA songs sounded weird being sung by single individuals in a Broadway context, especially since those songs are SO tied to the unique blended vocal sound of the two ABBA singers. Here, the songs frequently wind up sounding like the original ABBA songs (which is good!)

Pierce Brosnan has to sing a quite a bit, and he struggles quite a bit. He can sort of carry a tune, but he is not very musical. However, the whole thing is so winning that by the end I found myself tolerating Brosnan’s “Tom Waits on a dream day” singing style.

Lastly: The visuals: You never get tired of looking at the beautiful location where all this action takes place. Plus, the film-makers were free to lapse into movie montages in the middle of the songs, and I can tell you this makes all the difference in terms of how they go down on screen.

The film starts a little slowly, but I quickly found myself actually liking the silly story, and enjoying each ABBA number more than the last.

I’m not sure if this film actually has repeat watchability, but if you like ABBA and you like silly musicals with happy up-beat stories, I strongly encourage you to give it a try. In its own way, it really is rather brilliant.