Movie Review Nemesis Game

Nemesis Game (2003) 

Directed by Jesse Warn 

Written by Jesse Warn 

Starring Carly Pope, Adrian Paul, Ian McShane 

Release Date September 16th, 2003 

Published September 16th, 2003 

With all the trash that gets dumped in the direct-to-video market, it's rare when you find one that is not a poorly-crafted action knockoff or a T & A soft-core porno. Nemesis Game, directed by up and comer Jesse Warn, is neither of those things. Though Nemesis Game isn't exactly theater quality, it shows the potential this young director has to do great things in the future.

The story begins in your typical police station interrogation room where a detective (Ian "Lovejoy" McShane) is questioning a woman named Emily Gray (Rena Owen). Emily is famous for having attempted to drown a small child with seemingly no motive whatsoever. It's years later and Ms. Gray has been recently released from psychiatric care only to have killed a college freshman, again with seemingly no motive. Her only answer to repeated questioning is the quixotic "What if I told you I knew the meaning of life?"

From there we switch gears to a comic shop run by Vern (Adrian Paul), a comic book philosopher with a love for riddles. Vern runs a side business where he takes suburbanite nerds out to an abandoned building and leads them on a D & D style quest by having them answer riddles that lead to a particular conclusion. In all honesty I have know idea what the purpose of these scenes are, only that they set up the connection between Vern and the first woman to ever play his little riddle game, our heroine Sara played by Carly Pope.

For years, Sara has been obsessed with riddles and thinks maybe Vern can lead her to a series of riddles that when solved can tell you the meaning of life. Ian McShane's cop also happens to be Sara's father and Emily Gray happens to be linked to the riddle Sara is searching for. Jay Baruchel from TV's short lived “Undeclared” has a small role as a victim and Brenden Fehr has an equally small but more meaningful role as a pothead skater and customer at Vern's comic shop.

With Vern's help, Sara seeks the answers to the meaning of life riddle while her father attempts to determine why Emily Gray snapped after seeming to have recovered while in care.

The two stories dovetail in an ending that is the film’s strongest point for its suddenness and bravery. Honestly, even as the credits rolled I kept waiting for the film to start again and undo itself from what I had just seen.

What doesn't work though is the casting, especially former “Highlander” TV star Adrian Paul. His lack of charisma and horribly wooden action style threaten to cave in the film’s momentum in the moments when it desperately needs it. Paul is especially undercut by the far more charismatic but limited performances of Baruchel and Fehr, who's acting and youth make Paul look like an old man desperately trying to act cool. Nemesis Game cries out for a more charismatic actor or at least persona than what Paul provides.

As for the star of the film, Carly Pope, she has just the right mix of wits and cuteness to make her character work. She perfectly mixes naive curiosity and survival instinct to make her character's purpose seem plausible.

The cast member who makes the best impression though is Rena Owen as Emily. She has a mystical, beatific quality that makes her seem almost supernatural. Each of the other actors always say her full name and say it with reverence as if speaking it were an incantation. It works in making the audience uncomfortable in her presence, as if she really does know the meaning of life but if she tells you she will have to kill you.

Jesse Warn both directed and wrote the screenplay for Nemesis Game and with a bigger budget he could have really done something with this concept. With a better actor in place of Adrian Paul, improved cinematography and set design and a better film score (The current score is a mishmash of screechy thriller music from every other direct-to-video thriller ever made), and Nemesis Game could have been a career maker. As it is, the film is a signpost of a hopefully bright future for this talented filmmaker.

Documentary Review Mr. Death

Mr. Death (1999) 

Directed by Errol Morris 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Fred A Leuchter Jr. 

Release Date December 29th, 1999 

Published August 4th, 2003 

I used to be one of those “eye for an eye” types. A guy who was adamantly pro-death penalty. Then last year as I watched the death row in Illinois dismantled by its outgoing Governor, stories began to come out about four innocent men who were nearly put to death by electrocution. I came to the realization that if even one innocent man goes to his death at the hands of the state, then that blood is on all of our hands.

The death penalty is way too flawed a concept to be continued in this supposedly civilized country. Of course, you could never convince Fred A. Leuchter Jr. of that. Leuchter is an engineer who earned the nickname Mr. Death because of his proficiency for repairing antiquated death chambers. Leuchter is the subject of the documentary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr. by Errol Morris, the man who directed the thrilling documentary Fast Cheap and Out of Control.

Mr. Death was actually supposed to be merely a chapter of Fast Cheap and Out of Control, a simple 30 minute segment on this unassuming little man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of inmates. However, once Morris began to look a little deeper into Fred Leuchter's unusual life, a new subplot emerged. A quirky profile of a death chamber repairman turned into a story about the Holocaust and one small man's desperation to be loved and accepted by anyone, even if it was a group of Neo-Nazis.

Fred Leuchter Jr. grew up in the New Jersey prison system. His father was a guard and young Fred would often join his father at work. Spending his days hanging out with guards and inmates, he learned the tricks of the criminal trade like hot wiring cars. He also had an experience not many teenagers can claim, he was strapped into the electric chair. It was a life changing moment for Leuchter, it began his unusual fascination with the implements of state sponsored death.

The documentary begins as it was likely intended to in its initial conception, a series of interviews with this strange shy little man who built lethal injection machines, and repaired electric chairs, gas chambers and even gallows. As Leuchter explains directly to the camera, he was appalled by the conditions of the electric chairs and set about using his engineering skills to develop a more efficient killing machine. 

In graphic detail, Leuchter recounts the gruesomeness of the old style electric chairs, the way they charred the flesh, set the condemned on fire, and popped their eyes out of their heads. Leuchter claims his inspiration was humanistic. He was interested in making death as comfortable as possible for the condemned, though he doesn't seem very convincing. The sense I got was that he was a guy who found a unique niche for himself and took to it quite readily.

Whatever your opinion of Leuchter and his business, he does at first seem to be a simple pragmatic businessman. He had a wife and family. His business, however macabre it is, was enough to comfortably support his family.

Then a strange thing happened in the life of Fred Leuchter. He was subpoenaed to appear in court in Canada on behalf of a man named Ernst Zundel, a historical revisionist on trial for printing a pamphlet that the Canadian government claimed was a call to violence and hatred. Zundel's revisionist history of World War II included the contention that the Holocaust never happened.

What does this have to do with Fred Leuchter? Zundel hired the expert on death chambers to determine whether the German internment camps actually had gas chambers. On Zundel's dime, Leuchter, his wife and a camera crew traveled to Auschwitz and committed what can only be described as a crime. With his wife as a lookout, Leuchter went into the chamber and began chipping away pieces of the wall and floors. His intent, to take the samples back to the U.S and have them tested for cyanide, the Nazi's poison of choice.

Fred Leuchter's "investigation" however was quite flawed. He did not bother to explain to the American lab that tested his samples what he was looking for. The tests as they were conducted could not have possibly found cyanide. As the scientist who performed the experiment explained, cyanide does not penetrate deeply into the walls; it barely registers below the surface. Because the gas chambers had been exposed to the elements for nearly 40 years, when Leuchter gathered his samples the degradation of the samples rendered the experiment useless.

These massive screw-ups did not stop Leuchter from testifying that he did not find any evidence of cyanide and it was his opinion that Auschwitz did not have a gas chamber. Despite Leuchter's "expert" testimony, Zundel was convicted. Because of his findings, called The Leuchter Report, Fred became popular amongst neo-Nazi groups who adopted him as a spokesman. Leuchter basked in the attention, the standing ovations of glad handing Nazi's who called him a genius.

When Leuchter returned to his regular life, he found that the States that had contracted with him to fix their death chambers were no longer in need of his services. His report that made him so many new friends was not surprisingly off putting to politicians who don't want to be in business with a man who calls Nazi's friends. Of course, Leuchter believes it's a Jewish conspiracy, but he says he is not anti-Semitic.

Maybe he's not truly anti-Semitic, in the documentary he does seem to come off as a little naive and slow. It is as if he believes he just did a job and why should that bother anyone? He can't imagine why anyone would find his views on the Holocaust offensive.

Errol Morris appraises his subject from a far. Unlike some filmmakers, Morris is content to remain completely off camera. He doesn't even contribute a narration, allowing his subject to narrate with his answers to off-screen questions. Morris has an interesting visual style, very crisp photography mixed with archival footage and the amateur footage that Leuchter compiled on his trip to Auschwitz.

There is nothing entertaining about Mr. Death but it is oddly fascinating. Watching this strange little man as he struggles to understand why he's not taken seriously, why he can no longer find a job, and why his wife left him. Even before his trip to Germany, he struggles to understand why people look at him funny, why people find his job so creepy and weird. He's not self-conscious, just confused.

Movie Review Raising Helen

Raising Helen (2004) 

Directed by Garry Marshall

Written by Jack Amiel, Michael Begler

Starring Kate Hudson, John Corbett, Joan Cusack, Hayden Panattiere, Spencer Breslin, Helen Mirren

Release Date May 28th, 2004

Published May 30th, 2004 

Ever since I was a kid, there was one thing that my mother and I had in common and that was a love for movies. Though our tastes are very different, occasionally my mom would surprise me. She loves Days of Heaven and Sleepless In Seattle, she loves La Dolce Vita and Grease, all of which are in her video collection. Her one abiding love however is cheeseball romantic comedies. Anything of the Hanks-Ryan canon, Julia Roberts is a goddess, but only romantic Julia, preferably teamed with Richard Gere.

I bring this up because on Mother's Day my mother joined me for one of those cheeseball romantic comedies she so dearly loves, Garry Marshall's new film Raising Helen. While I sat there in my cynical, cold-hearted shell completely unmoved by Marshall's greeting card sentimentality, my mother laughed and cried as if on cue from the film to do so. It's an example that any film critic needs to hear that certain movies play to certain audiences. That doesn't make a movie good but it should give you something to think about before launching into another cynical diatribe about the death of film. I might have walked away from this film ready to write such a review had my mom not been there.

In typical romantic comedy fashion, Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) has a fabulous job, fabulous friends and endless amounts of disposable income for her fabulous clothes and apartment. This all changes when Helen's older sister Lindsey and her husband are killed in a car crash leaving behind three children. Naturally, Helen assumes that her other sister Jenny (Joan Cusack), already a wife and mother, will take in Lindsey's kids but Lindsey has a surprise for them both. In what many would consider bad judgment, Lindsey has left the kids, Audrey, 14 (Hayden Panettiere), Henry, 10 (Spencer Breslin) and Sarah, 5 (Abigail Breslin) to Helen.

Helen's life of fashion shows and nightclubs is thrown out of whack. Soon her trendy apartment is gone in favor of a not-so-posh Brooklyn apartment. Her job working at a fashion agency for the criminally underused Helen Mirren in a throwaway role as Helen's boss, is gone because her kids destroy a fashion show. On the bright side, Helen has found the kids a good school. A Lutheran high school where the principal is the very handsome Pastor Dan (John Corbett).

From my perspective this obvious material moves slowly towards its obvious conclusions with a little humor and plenty of contrived melodrama. Sitcom level humor permeates every corner of the film that isn't taken up with “very special episode” style theatrics. However, for every cynical hard-hearted comment from me, my mom laughed and cried. Mom was under the film’s spell from moment one and remained there until the very end.

The one part of the film that we both could agree upon were the actors who at times when not being manipulated by the plot, actually are very good. Kate Hudson deserves a better vehicle for her talents than the tired romances she seems trapped in at the moment. The radiance and life force that made Almost Famous so memorable still shines through, slightly dimmed because the material is not nearly as engaging as she is.

The supporting cast is also very good. Joan Cusack may be the most reliable character actresses in all of Hollywood. John Corbett backs up his handsome face with great wit and self-deprecating manner. The film actually gets a little better in the scenes when it's only Hudson and Corbett together, these two have terrific chemistry. The child actors are…well, they are child actors and in movies like these, they are placeholders for the plot.

Ask me how I feel about Raising Helen and I'll tell you that Garry Marshall's affinity for greeting card level emotions is as grating as fingernails on a chalkboard. Raising Helen is another assembly line Hollywood film that had a poster before it had a script. However, my Mom would tell you that Raising Helen is a sweet, funny, family movie that will make you laugh and cry and walk out with a smile on your face and a little choked up. Mom would give Raising Helen 10 out of 10. I wish I could be as kind.

Movie Review Mostly Martha

Mostly Martha (2001) 

Directed by Sandra Nettelbeck 

Written by Sandra Nettelbeck 

Starring Martina Gedeck, Sergio Castillitto

Release Date August 6th, 2001

Published December 2nd, 2002 

In the late 90’s early 2000;s there was a small subgenre that some have dubbed the “food movie.” Films where the preparing of food is as or even more important than the character-driven stories surrounding them. Films like Big Night, Tortilla Soup, and Like Water For Chocolate all centered around food so beautifully prepared that the audience actually salivates. The German film Mostly Martha is a food movie but much depends on your love of German food. 

The film stars Martina Gedeck as Martha, a talented chef who lives to prepare food. Her obsessions are so strong that she is forced to see a shrink because she relates to food better than she does to people. Martha's assistant chef is leaving and is replaced by an Italian chef who does things his own way. Sergio Castellita plays Mario, and rather than following Martha's lead, he immediately begins changing things (including the menu), much to Martha's dismay. 

Complicating things further for Martha is the death of her sister which leaves Martha to care for her nine-year old niece Lina (Maxime Forest). Martha has never had a child and has not spent much time with her niece in her short life. Her only connection to the kid comes from food and making meals for the kid. With no other options, Martha is forced to bring Lina to the restaurant where Lina bonds with Mario.

Mostly Martha is a simple film in scale. It is an average romantic comedy with the conventional feel of an American film. Watching it, you can easily imagine an American version with Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan in the lead opposite Kevin Kline with a funny accent or a cast-against-type John Cusack as the Italian love interest. It is such a conventional romantic comedy that it exhibits everything I have come to hate about the genre: the predictability, the cuteness, and the obvious strain to keep the lovers apart until the end.

Not surprisingly, the only real bright spot in Mostly Martha is the food. There are some very lovely scenes of food preparation and presentation in Mostly. Credit goes to Cinematographer Michael Bertl for filming the food as if you could eat it off the screen. Director Sandra Nettleback seems to sense the film's weaknesses and tries to use the delectable food to distract from the predictable story.

Mostly Martha has been compared, by some, to the amazing Hugh Grant film About A Boy, because of the difficult relationship between Martha and her newly-adopted niece. The comparisons are entirely one note in that both movies depict difficult relationships between childish adults and wise-beyond-their-years children; however, the comparisons end there. Where About A Boy is charming and funny, Mostly Martha is predictable and forced.

Mostly Martha has its moments—all of them dealing with food. The rest of the film is pure romantic comedy washout.

Movie Review Resurrecting the Champ

Resurrecting the Champ (2007) 

Directed by Rod Lurie

Written by Allison Burnett 

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett, Kathryn Morris, Alan Alda, Rachel Nichols

Release Date August 24th, 2007

Published August 23rd, 2007 

Josh Hartnett is a young actor who I have really come to enjoy. His work is always complex and never predictable. His performances in Lucky Number Slevin, The Black Dahlia and Mozart & The Whale are three of the best performances by any actor in the last two years. Each has a different tone, a different approach and requires different skills and yet Hartnett nails each one.

For his latest film Resurrecting The Champ, Hartnett outclasses the material which takes a compelling true story and fouls it up with false subplots and an ending far too neat and tidy to be believed.

Resurrecting The Champ is loosely based on a story by L.A Times writer J.R Moehringer. The story of an old homeless man who claimed he was once a heavyweight boxing contender. His stories about Rocky Marciano and Jake LaMotta and Floyd Patterson held Moehringer in sway  for weeks but in researching this compelling fellow, Moehringer discovered a secret that changed the story from one of redemption to one of grand delusions and good intentions.

The movie Resurrecting The Champ casts Josh Hartnett in the role of Erik Kernan, a struggling boxing beat writer for a fake Denver newspaper, The Denver Times. His boss (Alan Alda) feels his writing lacks personality and buries most of his stories. Kernan's wife, Joyce, also a journalist, has kicked him out of the house for reasons that are only moderately clear.

Kernan lives in the shadow of his father, a legendary boxing announcer who abandoned him and his mother when Erik was only 6 years old. He is at the bottom of his self loathing, daddy blaming rope when he stumbles across the champ (Samuel L. Jackson). Claiming to be Bombing Bob Satterfield a one time contender for boxing's world heavyweight championship, the champ as those on the street call him, is now living next to a dumpster behind the Denver sports arena.

Sensing a heart rending sports story that could save his career, Erik implores the champ to tell him his life story and how he went from nearly fighting for the title to being homeless in Denver. His stories about breaking Rocky Marciano's nose and falling to Pretty Boy Floyd are compelling and Erik is at rapt attention. However, the champ has a secret that threatens to take both of them back down to the gutters.

Resurrecting The Champ is a project 10 years in the making. Producer Mike Medavoy bought the rights to J.R Moehringer's LA Times Magazine story not long after it was published in 1997. The film passed between a number of talents, including Morgan Freeman who was once set to play the champ. Finally, producer Bob Yari and director Rob Lurie managed to land Sam Jackson and Josh Hartnett for the leads and Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures finally gave the go ahead.

Jackson and Hartnett are terrific casting. Though Jackson has struggled recently, allowing his bad ass reputation to become something of a caricature, he redeems himself with an immersive performance as the champ. Josh Hartnett continues a series of tremendous performances with complex turns as a feckless self aggrandizer who is forced to confront the emptiness of his own life opposite the life of the champ who despite his circumstances, seems to want for nothing.

The script by Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett mirrors in many ways Stephen Ray's Shattered Glass. Both films are about journalists who find themselves overwhelmed by their own ambition. Shattered Glass is more accomplished, but Resurrecting The Champ benefits from a cast that elevates similar material. Both films are insightful about the pressures of the world of journalism through Glass again has the advantage with a cleaner, linear narrative.

Resurrecting The Champ tries a little too hard to cover a number of complex issues. As if the central story of this homeless fighter and the opportunistic journalist weren't enough, the film ladles on a backstory for each character about fathers and sons and the lengths one goes to be a good father or to avoid becoming a bad father. It's not that this fathers and sons subplot is poorly played, rather just that it distracts from the more interesting world of journalism and this dynamic relationship between the champ and the journalist.

Regardless of some aching narrative problems, including an ending that is far too easily tied up in a pretty bow, Resurrecting The Champ is a compelling character study. Watching Samuel L. Jackson return to form by becoming 'the champ', you are reminded of what a great talent Jackson is when given a good character to play.

His work in Resurrecting The Champ alongside Josh Hartnett is so good that you can't help but get caught up rooting for both characters even as they fail and reveal their flaws. The champ is something of an innocent, having spent much of his later years punch drunk from years in the ring, he is easy to sympathize with to a point.

Josh Hartnett has the more difficult character. His Erik Kernan is feckless, self loathing and a little lazy. When confronted about his writing early in the film we are told he really isn't very good. His own wife evinces only disappointment when she looks at him. Worst of all, Erik feels compelled to lie about his life to his six year old son leading to a scene with former Broncos quarterback John Elway that is painful and embarrassing in very real ways.

Hartnett's job is to somehow bring us to care about this guy and root for his redemption and he succeeds with an earnest come to Jesus series of epiphanies about his life that had me riveted. His character is, unfortunately, undermined late in the film by an ending that rushes past some of his more emotional moments, on its way to a too tidy ending, but Hartnett throughout remains a compelling presence.

Resurrecting The Champ is something of a disappointment in the end. The film aches to be deeper than it is and more complex than it needs to be. The story wraps up too quickly and too neatly. Still, Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett make a great team and they elevate the material to the point that their work together is worth the price of admission even if the movie itself does not hold up to much inspection.

Movie Review Kickin It Old Skool

Kickin' it Old Skool (2007)

Directed by Harvey Glazer

Written by Josh Siegel 

Starring Jamie Kennedy, Maria Menounos, Miguel Nunez, Vivica A Fox

Release Date April 27th, 2007

Published April 28th, 2007

Has any actor thrived more on less talent? I've asked this question every time I've seen Jamie Kennedy take the lead in another of his low budget unfunny comedies. Beginning with the offensively unfunny Malibu's Most Wanted to the dreadfully unwatchable Son of the Mask and now through his latest abomination called Kickin' It Old Skool a bizarre homage to or satire of 80's breakdance culture, I have watched in stunned disbelief as another film studio tossed more millions at this tremendously unfunny comic.

In Kickin' It Old Skool Jamie Kennedy stars as Justin, a breakdance aficionado who puts himself into a coma attempting a difficult breakdance move. 20 some years pass before Justin somehow comes out of his coma still feeling like that 12 year old kid who loved to spin on his head. With medical bills crushing his poor parents, Justin has to find a way to make some quick cash.

His lucky break comes when a trip to the mall reunites him with his former breakdancing pal Darnell (Miguel A. Nunez) who points him in the direction of a new dance contest TV show shooting at the mall. Thus Justin launches a plan to reunite his old breakdance pals, Darnell, Aki (Bobby Lee) and Hector (Aris Alvarado) and try to win the dance contest. Standing in his way is his old rival and the show's host Kip (Michael Rosenbaum). But he does find support from Kip's girlfriend Jennifer (Maria Menounos) who was Justin's childhood crush.

Kickin' It Old Skool runs on two comic tracks. On the one track is an homage to cheeseball 80's culture including a truly lame cameo from David Hasselhoff. On the other is an attempt to parody recent dance off movies like Stomp The Yard and You Got Served. Unfortunately, director Harvey Glazer lacks the talent to combine these elements into one comic focus.

It doesn't help that his star Jamie Kennedy is utterly talentless. Yes, I admit admiring his know it all performance in Scream but name another thing that Jamie Kennedy has done that he can be proud of? Hmm.....The Mask 2?

Kickin 'It Old Skool suffers from  the same comic misapprehension as so many comedies of 2007. Movies like Hot Rod and Balls of Fury and Kickin 'It Old Skool all seem to believe that if the main character does something out of the norm; that thing is automatically funny. Context be damned. In Hot Rod it's supposed to be funny that this guy is a small town stunt man. In Balls of Fury the main character plays ping pong. In Kickin' It Old Skool Jamie Kennedy and his pals breakdance.

The creators of these films simply assume we will laugh at the premise and never bother to actually write funny jokes or give the characters anything funny to do aside from falling down or listening to music more than 20 years old. If you think old school rap is hysterically funny just for existing, then Kickin' It Old Skool is the movie for you.

I would rather watch a Rob Schneider film festival than sit through one Jamie Kennedy movie. From Malibu's Most Wanted to Son of the Mask and now Kickin' It Old Skool, Kennedy continues to demonstrate a complete lack of comic chops. On the bright side, audiences are beginning to agree as his starring roles continue to do less and less at the box office. Let's keep up the good work folks. The less people who see Kickin' It Old Skool, the less chance he'll get another starring role. If we continue to work together we can end this plague. Thank you.

Movie Review Mamma Mia

Mamma Mia (2008) 

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd 

Written by Catherine Johnson 

Starring Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan

Release Date July 18th, 2008 

Published July 17th, 2008

I have to confess an odd affinity for the music of Abba. The safe, uncalculating earnestness of their disco pop is a pleasant little distraction on occasion. Spike Lee even managed to turn Dancing Queen into a powerful expression of the times when he used it to evoke the synthetic happiness of the late seventies in his underappreciated epic Summer of Sam.

Broadway show tuner Phyllida Lloyd captured perfectly the jaunty, uncomplicatedness of Abba's music when she brought Mamma Mia to the stage in 2005. Even the Tony's sat up and took notice. Now Lloyd has brought the superfluous fun of arguably disco's finest ambassador's (Sorry Bee Gees fans) to the big screen.

Mamma Mia stars Meryl Streep as Donna Sheridan, a former disco queen turned hotelier. Donna runs a hotel on the coast of the Adriatic that draws the bare minimum of tourists. Her most urgent project is getting the place fixed up for her daughter Sophie's wedding. Sophie has a big surprise in order for mom. While mom is welcoming guests, including her former singing pals Tonya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters), Sophie is welcoming three surprise guests, each of whom is a blast from Donna's past and, more importantly, each may be Sophie's dad.

Colin Firth plays Harry with his typical British neurotic energy. Stellan Skarsgard is Bill, a globe -trotting journalist going with the free spirited flow at all times. And Pierce Brosnan is Sam, a rich guy who quickly figures out what is going on and comes to assume that he is Sophie's dad and that after all these many, many years, he is still in love with Donna.

That makes a good straight forward plot. However, Mamma Mia is far from straight. I mean straight forward. Sorry. Because the music of Abba serves as the inspiration for Mamma Mia the songs of Sweden's number one entertainment source are jammed into every corner and only some willingly adhere to the story being told.

Making things even more complicated than trying to shoehorn so much music into the movie, is the fact that the stars sing for themselves and most aren't great. Meryl Streep is good, Christine Baranski is better and Julie Walters can carry a tune but the boys are completely overmatched.

Pierce Brosnan is outright brutal as he attempts a duet with Streep. Firth and Skarsgard are equally unlistenable. They are saved, a little bit, by the massive production numbers that accompany the song and give them light and energy. A Lot of Mamma Mia is capable of skating on good intentional and the sheer willful intent to entertain.

Mamma Mia is undeniably fun and frothy. That said, if you don't love Abba you won't love this movie. It's a musical with nothing but Abba tunes. Tunes are jammed into scenes just for the fact that they are Abba tunes and regardless of whether they belong in the story. If you aren't a fan there is nothing here to appeal to you.

Jaunty and energetic in its bizarre way, Mamma Mia is a fans only entertainment that will preach well to the converted and leave the rest in the cold.