Miss - Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Christine Baranski, Dominic Cooper

Sophie is about to get married to the man of her dreams, everything is perfect, except she wants her father to walk her down the aisle. The only problem is, she doesn’t know who her father is. To find out more, Sophie reads her mothers diary and discovers that there are three possible fathers. Therefore, Sophie invites all three gentlemen to the wedding. Imagine her mother’s suprise when she finds out.

As a lover of musicals, I find it interesting that this movie had so many opportunities to succeed and yet it still failed to provide the most essential film element - a story. Well, technically there is a story, but it is so drab that it doesn’t carry the audience through the entire film. The advertisements for the film make people believe that the main character of the film is Sophie (played by Amanda Seyfried) but in actuality, the main character of the movie is Sophie’s mother Donna (played by Meryl Streep).

Another area where the movie fails to deliver is in casting. Pierce Brosnan cannot sing to save his life. Every time he would open his mouth to sing, the entire audience would bust up laughing. This is not what the filmmakers were going for as the tone of the film is not burlesque. Now that I think about it… maybe the tone is burlesque… nah! Meryl Streep can sing but friends have expressed to me that they felt she was not a very good singer. Either way, she got the job done.

This movie had so many great elements. There was excellent choreography, songs, art direction, costuming, and general filming location. It is unfortunate that the story is so bland and they failed to realize that someone like Michael Crawford would have been a better fit for the Pierce Brosnan character.

Bottom Line: Mamma…mia.

Musical

Rated PG-13 for some sex-related comments.

Running Time: 1 hour 48 minutes.