A film that boasts such a glittering ensemble almost demands attention: Meryl Streep! Amanda Seyfried! Pierce Brosnan! Stellan Skarsgård! Colin Firth! Erm, Julie Walters! It's an all-star cast to be sure. It's just a shame that the project that would unite such a large amount of acting talent would have to the be the ABBA musical, Mama Mia!, one of the cultural phenomena of the decade. Not that that means much. The general public have freaked out about much less. Those Compared The Meerkat adverts are still airing, for example. Perhaps the strangest part of Mama Mia's existence is that the producers decided to go not only with actors who had not background with singing for a musical, but actors who seemed to be actively awful singers. Streep fairs a lot better than most because, really, nobody could be quite as bad as Pierce Brosnan's take on When All Is Said And Done but c'mon, who hires Meryl Streep on the strength of her pipes? She's adept as switching between the big roles and the more fluffy parts but really, this is way below her. It's way beyond anyone involved, but especially an actor whose achievements are as numerous and varied as Meryl Streep's. And yet rumours of a sequel persist. Are they even any ABBA songs left? And will audiences be subject to well, this again?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
