Mamma Mia!
Universal Pictures | Release Date: July 18, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
13
Mixed:
21
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Hollywood ReporterRay Bennett
It's a delightful piece of filmmaking with a marvelous cast topped by Meryl Streep in one of her smartest and most entertaining performances ever. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The movie takes the ABBA jukebox musical that ate London, and is still eating Broadway, and turns it into a surprisingly sensuous experience. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The chorus backs the soloists powerfully, and they are as fresh as the rest of the film: fat and fit, homely and handsome, young gods and old codgers – in short, people you might really see in Greece. Reality in a musical? That alone makes it worth your open-eared attention. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The good-natured silliness is contagious. When Streep runs singing through a Greek village, it's like a spirited homage to "The Sound of Music." Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
This is an actress (Streep) who can pull off anything -- including a shamelessly kitschy musical. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Mamma Mia! is fun, the music's terrific and the cast is appealing. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
An exuberant if not always brilliantly crafted adaptation of the campy ABBA musical. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's airheaded just like the songs it embraces but, if you enjoy them, there's every reason to believe you'll appreciate the film. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Yes, of course this is fairly old-fashioned entertainment, but it's really, really entertaining. Read full review
70
SlateDana Stevens
It makes bursting spontaneously into song seem like a perfectly reasonable--indeed, highly desirable--thing to do, and it leaves the audience wanting to do the same. I see a big uptick in late-summer karaoke parties. Read full review
63
PremiereEmily Rems
Before plunking down your cash for a ride on the Mamma Mia! express when it pulls into town, just ask yourself one question: Do I really dig ABBA? Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Taken for what it is – a fluffy, intergenerational farce as a frame for some seventies musical nostalgia – Mamma Mia! just gets away with it, in spite of director Lloyd's lack of cinematic inexperience. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
As a story, Mamma Mia! is a sham, a narrative so rickety it makes "Grease" seem like Shakespeare. It fails as a musical, too, since only about half of the songs have any bearing on the scene that preceded them. Read full review
60
VarietyJordan Mintzer
Scribe-creator Catherine Johnson (also in her first screen outing) and theater-opera vet Lloyd can't seem to find the right tone or style for their globally celebrated material. Read full review
60
EmpireAngie Errigo
Cute, clean, camp fun, full of sunshine and toe tappers. Guaranteed to put grins on tweenies who are in to High School Musical, grans with a pair of platforms still at the back of the wardrobe, and a lot of people in between tone. Read full review
60
TimeRichard Corliss
By the end-credit sequence, when the stars appear in spandex outfits to reprise Dancing Queen, the audience may be singing along as if they'd overdosed on ouzo. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It's tempting to say that Mamma Mia! has the worst choreography of any big-screen musical in history, though that would imply that what happens in the film IS choreography. Read full review
50
Village VoiceElla Taylor
It's little more than droopy ditties draped around a threadbare plot. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
I COULD do without "Dancing Queen" stuck in my head, but that will unstick soon enough, and with any luck so too will the memory of Streep noodling on an air guitar. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
It's funny what you buy completely onstage and resist completely, or nearly, on-screen. Case in point: Mamma Mia! Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
All singing! All dancing! All squealing! The money-minting Broadway musical has been adapted into the year's most aggressive chick flick, with a score of irresistibly catchy ABBA tunes sweetening the dumb story like peaches in cottage cheese. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
The incongruous mix of real locations and stage sets, real voices and overdubs, is a constant distraction, while the choreography lumbers in group numbers and goes flat in more intimate ones. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
This is a movie guaranteed to please crowds, if only because it insists on their affection so strenuously. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Meryl Streep can do anything: sing, dance, do splits, act her heart out. She (almost) saves this clumsy, overwrought film version of the Abba musical that's been running on stages from Broadway to Barcelona since 1999. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This movie wasn't made for me. It was made for the people who will love it, of which there may be a multitude. The stage musical has sold 30 million tickets, and I feel like the grouch at the party. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
By turns entertaining and excruciating. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
You can have a perfectly nice time watching this spirited adaptation of the popular stage musical and, once the hangover wears off, acknowledge just how bad it is. Read full review
50
NPRBob Mondello
This plot is not being taken terribly seriously. It's mostly a pretext for songs that are mostly a pretext for acting silly. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Though the filmmakers may have been imagining they were re-creating the old days of MGM musicals, it's the Village People's misguided "Can't Stop the Music" that comes to mind instead. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The direction is slack -- it's Lloyd's first feature film and it shows -- the choreography clumsy and every ten minutes there's yet another gratuitous showstopper shouting in your face and insisting you have a good time. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
On the scale of modern musical adaptations, it's not a disaster of "The Producers" proportions. But it is missing the razzle-dazzle of a success like "Chicago." Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Poor Pierce Brosnan. Sport that he is, he does his level best to be a song-and-dance man but it's just not in him. He's touchingly awful. The same could probably be said for the entire movie. Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Like a party where everyone is so desperate to have a good time that it makes you miserable. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Seyfried (of Big Love and Mean Girls) is a radiant object and can sing, but I'd like to forget the others--especially Brosnan, whose singing is the best imitation I've heard of a water buffalo. Read full review
30
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Ferocious onslaught of obligatory good cheer. Read full review
25
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
I can see how Mamma Mia! might be a fun stage musical. As a movie musical, it's a train wreck. Read full review
20
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Watching Streep and her two BFFs, played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, grinning and giggling their way through Mamma Mia! I felt I was being thoroughly, and unenjoyably, punished. Read full review
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