Mamia Mia!, this was worse than I had feared.  I did not even get a great tour of the Greek islands. I was the first to leave the cinema. Now I was watching people coming out.  Women smiled, men looked pained, albeit a bit proud they took their lady to the movies.  Cinema, in my view, has rendered opera unnecessary.  What makes a great movie is that, unlike opera or its modern incarnation—the musical—, it makes you forget that you are watching a staged reality. The best movies become lifelike. You think you are watching reality. In Mamia Mia! you never forget that you are watching a show. A good playwright like Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love) could have managed to write a decent script around the songs of Abba.  But Catherine Johnson lacked the skills and produced childish superficial love story. Pierce Brosnan (the former James Bond) is not able to act out his inane role. Meryl Streep does better with hers, showing that she is a truly great actor because she can play any role, even the most trivial one, without letting you know that she is acting. Making the actors sing all the songs, even when they have the weakest voice as in the case of Pierce Brosnan, struck me a big mistake.  I yearned for the real voices of ABBA. The movie would have been a lot better if once in a while the actors could have done ABBA karaoke instead of pretending that they can be real singers. 

showing that she is a truly great actor because she can play any role, even the most trivial one, without letting you know that she is acting. Making the actors sing all the songs, even when they have the weakest voice as in the case of Pierce Brosnan, struck me a big mistake.  I yearned for the real voices of ABBA. The movie would have been a lot better if once in a while the actors could have done ABBA karaoke instead of pretending that they can be real singers.