Mamma Mia! The Movie (2008)

Music can bring back memories so vivid you'd swear you were young again. One of the high points of Phyllida Lloyd's "Mamma Mia!," the musical built around the massive hits of the Swedish pop group ABBA, is the joyous sight of Meryl Streep leading a whole parade of women of every age in "Dancing Queen." The story kicks off when Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who's about to marry her sweetheart, Sky (Dominic Cooper), reads her mother's old diary and realizes that one of three former flames could be her father. So she secretly invites all three to her wedding. When they arrive on the sun-drenched Greek island where her mother, Donna (Streep), runs a ramshackle hotel, Donna is thrown into a tailspin as feelings she thought she'd left behind come rushing back. Let's be honest, though: the plot isn't the point. It's a flimsy contraption that gives everyone an excuse to belt out ABBA's greatest hits. Unfortunately, Lloyd, making her film directing debut after staging the original theater production, coaxes over-the-top performances from everyone, even Streep, and every musical number hammers you with its exuberance. That's a shame, because this is a rare thing: a romantic story about middle-aged people. The kids get things started, but the story really belongs to Streep and the three men - Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård - along with Donna's best friends, played by Christine Baranski and Julie Walters. It's a romantic comedy aimed at people who remember when these songs were brand new, an audience Hollywood tends to ignore. For that reason alone, it deserves to find its crowd, and it certainly did, becoming a huge worldwide hit.