Marrone Mia!

Official worldwide records will tell you that I am one of only six heterosexual males on the planet to actually see the stage musical "Mamma Mia" more than once. It is a cross I will continue to drag over hill and dale until I leave this mortal coil. I saw this ABBA-driven lovefest in Los Angeles and New York. Both times, I got sucked into the infectious frenzy and found myself inexplicably standing and cheering at the end. I hang my head in shame. I thoroughly enjoyed it on both coasts and even will admit to singing with a hair brush when I got home.

So, naturally, I was destined to be an all-day sucker for the movie version that just got released. And, given the majestic Greek island setting, the film adaptation could only get better if it was opened up on a big screen, right? Towering cliffs over sultry blue waters. Delicious tunes from ABBA. An ideal way to spend a summer's evening at the movies.

Yet, after almost two hours of watching "Mamma Mia" opened up to such gargantuan proportions, I can tell you that more is definitely less. Much, much less. On screen, this movie musical, which actually had some nifty intimate moments on stage, explodes at the seams. It's like you put a yacht in a bathtub. And what is ultimately served is not exactly great visual nourishment. I felt like I had just eaten nothing but Hamburger Helper for an entire week.

All the excess was not needed. Every production number wound up looking like rush hour in Athens. The quaint village setting is turned upside down every time the director, Phyllida Lloyd, felt compelled to choreograph a dance number with some high steppin' village peasants. She might as well have staged "West Side Story" with some Mexican day laborers down at the Home Depot parking lot. It all explodes onto the audience like a cupcake you cooked in a defective Easy Bake Oven when you were eight years old. There's sugar all over the place and it's really the first movie that should come with a listing for "calories from fat."

They should have trusted the music and simplicity. Admittedly, the threadbare plot, even on stage, is as cheesy as a Christmas sampler from Hickory Farms. But, somehow, in its live version, it worked. Not here. Not at all. As I left the theater, "SOS" was resonating in my mind. Not the song, but the distress call.

On stage, "Mamma Mia" was generally a non-star driven event. You didn't need to have a big name. As long as you could sing and dance and look good in skimpy clothing, you, too, could be in the chorus. But, of course, Hollywood got its hooks into the casting and it certainly is curious at best. Meryl Streep, in the title role of Donna, did hit more musical notes than her co-stars. But, she was shot in perhaps the worst lighting since Joan Crawford was trying to hide her crow's feet in "Humoresque." As a result, she appears about ten years older than she really is, which is about twenty years older than the character is supposed to be. Perhaps there was a strike by Greek make-up artists when the film was in production. Christine Baranski shows up as one of her friends, and her chiseled features now make it look like she is a drag queen doing an impersonation of Christine Baranski. Julie Walters, as the other singing Dynamo, is made to look dumpier than usual and really appears to have an immediate future watching over the linen department at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

And that brings us to the singing debut of Pierce Brosnan. If Don Knotts had ever attempted to release a cover album of Beatles music, that would have been better than what the former James Bond offers in "Mamma Mia." Five seconds after he first raises his voice in song, there is a wave of laughter in the theater that I haven't heard since the Marx Brothers crowded into a stateroom. You wind up being part uneasy, part hysterical, and part embarrassed by this vocal equivalent of a rectal probe. If he's giving it the good old college try, that would have to be what passes for it at Rockland Community College. It doesn't help that Mr. Brosnan appears to be a bit zaftig now that he doesn't get any exercise running around as 007. Or perhaps the "Mamma Mia" craft services department was making a mean Irish Stew. Surely, Pierce would have been helped if he had been dubbed by Marni Nixon. Or Julie Nixon. Or baseball outfielder Trot Nixon. Anybody, please. But, my undaunted moviegoing companion, the illustrious Djinn From the Bronx, one of the founding members of the Pierce Brosnan Fan Club, didn't care. She exclaimed, "But I still love him!" Love is as blind as Pierce is apparently tone deaf.

There are also some time elements in the movie that don't make sense. In an effort to update the script, there are references to text messages, e-mail, and the internet. They tell you that Sophie, the daughter and bride-to-be, is 20 years old, and that makes her born sometime in the late 80s, according to my fingers. Yet, when they show you pictures of her potential fathers at the time of her birth, they all are dressed like roadies for Grand Funk Railroad, a stellar rock band of the late 60s and early 70s. This could only suggest that Meryl Streep's character was pregnant for about 18 years. It does definitely confirm that the director and the screenwriter can't do basic math equations.

They make an attempt at duplicating the exhileration of the stage version's encore. But, that only works when you can stand, sing, and dance right along with the performers. You really can't do that in a movie theater, especially after the floor has been littered for two hours with popcorn, empty Vitamin Water bottles, and half-chewed Raisinets. Once again, it works on stage because it is spontaneous. Nothing in the film felt that way.

Had they pared it down by about two dozen Greek village idiots and concentrated on the wonderful ABBA songs, "Mamma Mia" on film would have had a fighting chance, with or without the unmusical stylings of the Artist Formerly Known as Remington Steele. As cinematic art, it was like a meal at the Cheesecake Factory, where you never ever can finish everything on your plate. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised during the closing credits when I saw Tom Hanks listed as one of the producers. Has anybody seen how fat and bloated he's gotten?

Dinner last night: English muffin (had a big lunch).