8 Great Movie Musicals To Watch This Holiday Season

7. Mamma Mia

Watch With: All the female members of your family - and any secret Abba fans. Crafting a film around the music of 70s pop group ABBA might sound like a tall challenge, but 2008's smash hit Mamma Mia quickly became the most commercially successfully movie musical of all time. Based on the wildly successful stage show, Mamma Mia is renowned for its endearing mix of tongue-in-cheek cheesiness, laugh-out-loud humour and movingly realistic familial relationships. Meryl Streep plays Donna, a mother running a hotel on a Greek island who is busy planning the upcoming wedding of her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). Donna's life is thrown off balance with the arrival of three of her former lovers, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård, any of whom could potentially be Sophie's father. With show-stopping musical numbers, a star-turn by Streep, fantastic support by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski and stunning Greek scenery (the film was shot on location on the Greek island of Skopelos) Mamma Mia is a joy to watch and makes for great Christmas viewing.