I don't quite know where to start in reviewing Mamma Mia! - the film really was that bad - both artistically and morally. I should probably say that I approached watching the film with some trepidation in the first place - whilst I've never particularly despised them, I've always found Abba's songs quite annoying; being drenched in nostalgia (sentimental recollection) as they are.

The biggest failure of the film (plot revelations contained ahead) is that it spends the whole time quite legitimately building on the premise that Sophie is desperate to find her true father - a longing I think most people could genuinely understand. But come the final scene this long-held desire is inexplicably dismissed through a simple change in her feelings and a replaced desire to see the world - as if that will answer her heart's deepest questions. Early on in the film Sophie asserts "I feel like there's a part of me missing, and when I meet my dad everything will fall into place". Later on she states "I don't want my children growing up not knowing who their father is, because it's cr*p!", and "all my life there's been this huge unanswered question", and further on "I want to get married knowing who I am". These assertions are unlovingly dismissed by her fiancée (Sky), who tells her "you don't need a father; you have a family" (before he goes on in song to admit that "every man I meet is a threat"), and also when he tells her that "(knowing yourself) doesn't come from knowing your father; it comes from knowing yourself". Yet Sky's assertion that Sophie doesn't need a father because she already has a family is just nonsensical: for what is a family if it doesn't constitute a mother and a father? However the latter statement, in some ways, does contain some truth to it - but is delivered without an essential explanation. It's true that knowing oneself isn't dependent upon knowing one's (human) father; though surely it helps an awful lot. However, knowing oneself is dependent upon at least trying to understand one's father, and in the case of the father and/or mother not being there throughout one's childhood (when nothing practically was stopping them being so) it is also dependent upon forgiving that parent - for as Sophie said "growing up not knowing who (my) father is, is cr*p!". Without seeking to understand others, and without forgiving, we will never truly know ourselves.

With respect to the rest of Mamma Mia! the central contradiction is that marriage and fidelity are mocked throughout the film - either implicitly or explicitly. Yet come the final scene (further plot revelations contained ahead) once again (the same occurs in the Sex and the City movie), the writer turns to marriage - the exclusive union between one man and one woman - in order to finish the film on a positive note. However, what isn't made clear is that in turning her back on marriage (at the age of 20 when it would be quite acceptable to get married) Sophie is setting up for herself years of further anxiety and arguments - the like of which her mother has already been through.

Two further important points I'd like to mention are:

Sophie justifies the hope of success in her marriage to Sky on the basis of her feelings, namely that "she loves Sky more than anything else in the world". Basing justification for getting married purely on an intense feeling of love is not a stable foundation to build a marriage upon. In fact if anything, her assertion that she loves Sky "more than anything else in the world" gives cause for alarm by implicitly acknowledging her idolatry of him. This in time will give way to a desire for perfection in both Sky and herself which is simply unobtainable. Whereas the only true and lasting foundation to base any marriage upon is the person of Jesus Christ - He is the rock around whom all marriages should be centered. And it is only by putting Jesus at the centre of marriage that a couple will be able to live and flourish together in matrimony.

And finally, to finish on a positive note myself, Sophie's mother Donna (as played by Meryl Streep) does say that when she got pregnant, despite her mother telling her not to come back, she went ahead and had Donna anyway, and that she wouldn't have had it any other way. And that indeed is a commendable thing to say - especially in today's society.