Trailer Watch: Mamma Mia!

The short teaser trailer for Mamma Mia!, this year’s screen adaptation of the hit stage musical based around songs of ABBA, is online, and I gather has been so for some time. For me, it elicits a big ol’ shrug. It’s the story of an 18-year-old (Amanda Seyfried), on the eve of her own nuptials, trying to discern her biological father — one of three former suitors (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) of her mother (Meryl Streep) — but it’s set in Greece, which unfortunately brings back more memories of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin than The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Look, I enjoyed the ever-loving flip out of Muriel’s Wedding, but this seems like a mushy, pre-chewed packaging of the most worn, threadbare elements of Lost in Translation, Definitely, Maybe and a couple other fairer-sex, multi-generational and/or travelogue romances that I’m forgetting precisely because they’re so forgettable. Maybe the music carries the day. I just know that I can appreciate ABBA, and I’m still not tingling with anticipation.