Listings for Friday, October 3, through Thursday, October 9, 2008

Mamma Mia!

Capsule by J.R. Jones

From the Chicago Reader

All singing! All dancing! All squealing! The money-minting Broadway musical has been adapted into the year's most aggressive chick flick, with a score of irresistibly catchy ABBA tunes sweetening the dumb story like peaches in cottage cheese. Bride-to-be Amanda Seyfried (of the HBO series Big Love), who's never met her father, discovers three likely candidates (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard) in the pages of her mother's purloined diary and invites them all to her Greek island home, much to the consternation of mom (a badly overtaxed Meryl Streep). Aside from the music, the movie's sole pleasure is Christine Baranski as Streep's brassy pal; tall, leggy, and self-assured, she turns her one solo number, "Does Your Mother Know," into an unexpected showstopper. Phyllida Lloyd, who mounted the Broadway and London productions, directed. PG-13, 108 min.

This movie is currently playing at: Pipers Alley

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