Mamma Mia!

Yes, Mamma Mia! is cheezy. Yes, it’s uneven and it’s unlikely and, if you look at it dispassionately, it’s all ridiculously silly. But the thing is, you simply cannot watch it dispassionately……

Blame those damn catchy tunes. Blame the fact that absolutely everyone seems to be having an absolute blast (you know it’s daft when career vamp Christine Baranski plays one of the more subdued characters). Blame Meryl Streep for completely stealing the show (how can you not just grin when you watch her sixty-something frame joyously bouncing on her big old bed, singing Dancing Queen at the top of her lungs?) Julie Walters is just dotty. Pierce Brosnan sings! And Greece has itself another glorious destination marketing product that’ll have the tourists clamouring.

A lot of the action was shot on the island of Skopelos – including the remarkable Agios Ioannis Prodromos Monastery that served as the wedding chapel (I thought for a while it had to be a set; I just hoped it really was an actual place). The beach at Kastani, a tiny bay on the west coast bay served as the film’s main external location site. Says the UK Telegraph

The producers built a beach bar and jetty but removed them when they left. Swimming offshore, you look back on a bay so symmetrical it might be an amphitheatre, and so extravagantly green that it might have been painted by a set hand.

The whole production may have been a breathy, high-paced shambles, but who cares? I’m packing as I type.