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'Mamma Mia!' A movie musical as good as the show

Linda Winer | Critical Mass

July 20, 2008

Even before "Mamma Mia! The Movie" opened Friday, Broadway was feeling it at the box office.

But contrary to historical expectations - that is, before the smash 2002 movie version of "Chicago" - that feeling at the box office was euphoria. Most shows lost audiences in the week from July 6 to 13. But according to Variety, the 7-year-old ABBA musical got a big bump from the hype around the movie - up a surprising $70,000 from the previous week.

How could this happen? Why would people choose to pay astronomical Broadway prices when they can see the shiny new edition - with movie stars - for pocket change at the local multiplex?

Clearly, the relationship between Broadway and Hollywood has transformed in the past five years. Before that, stage producers would try to put off movie adaptations as long as possible, fearing that the more accessible and affordable medium would crush the fragile marketplace in New York and on the road. And if the movie musical was awful - which has happened a lot in the half century since "My Fair Lady" - the original was tarnished, too.

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With "Chicago," however, the canny producers of the long-running revival changed the game. By hooking up with the competition, they rode the coattails of the huge advertising budget and aligned themselves to share the branding.

Just as Disney builds its stage shows on the familiarity of its cartoons - you know, "You've seen the movie, kids, now see Simba live" - "Chicago" built on the appeal of seeing Roxie and Velma in the flesh. This would not have kept the show running until this day, of course, if the movie hadn't been the most satisfying screen musical since "Cabaret" in 1972.

Since then, we have had a boomlet of relatively successful and smartly made movie musicals - including "Sweeney Todd," "Dreamgirls" and "Hairspray." And we have had duds - most conspicuously, "The Producers," "Rent" and "The Phantom of the Opera." In the fall, Rob Marshall, who directed "Chicago," starts shooting "Nine" with Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren and Penélope Cruz. According to this week's Variety, the gears are turning for a movie of "Wicked."

And here comes "Mamma Mia!," the guilty pleasure/karaoke/family romance that has already grossed $2 billion on stages around the world. The movie, despite its gorgeous Greek island vistas, is a remarkably faithful translation of the modest, dopey but disarmingly sweet glob of neo-nostalgic brain candy.

It also has an amazing performance by Meryl Streep, who sings and dances and does aerial splits (in overalls) as if she were still the same gifted Yale graduate (again in overalls) who mesmerized audiences at the Public Theater in 1980 by playing all the characters in a solo musical called "Alice in Concert."

"Mamma Mia!" is the rare movie adaptation entrusted to the original writer and stage director - an admirable gesture of loyalty that did not help director Susan Stroman in her unfortunate film debut with the stagy "Producers." Phyllida Lloyd, in charge of the ABBA musical since its London premiere, combines the MTV editing that worked in "Chicago" with some of the hallucinatory fairy-tale quality of Baz Luhrmann's 2001 movie-musical breakthrough, "Moulin Rouge!"

Until then, it seemed that movies and music had become incompatible systems. Musicals are stylized. Most movies are realistic. Musicals try to make us think they're special when they do something big. Movies are already big. And what about those cringe-reflex moments at the end of movie songs and dances when people freeze as if waiting for applause?

As "Chicago" proved, the best new movie musicals have embraced fantasy and stylization. It also helps to have stars. This is both thrilling ( Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd) and downright weird ( Pierce Brosnan, singing, sort of, as one of Streep's former lovers). I remember how upset I was that Catherine Zeta-Jones was cast as the movie's Velma Kelley, a role owned by Bebe Neuwirth in the hit revival of "Chicago." And then I saw the film and understood better.

It's an old story, how the original artists were cheated out of the movie versions of their Broadway triumphs. To add spit to the wound, the stars were often dubbed.

I'd like to care less what Hollywood does to Broadway. Outside of New York, however, many of us grew up knowing most of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals from films that didn't begin to capture the magic of the material.

Thus, my childhood favorite "Gypsy" starred Rosalind Russell, not Ethel Merman. I loved Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady," but never knew Julie Andrews, nor understood until years later that Hepburn was lip-synching to Marni Nixon's voice.

"South Pacific," revived so magnificently now at the Lincoln Center Theater? With Mitzi Gaynor in the film instead of Mary Martin, Rossano Brazzi instead of Ezio Pinza, little wonder so many of us are now awestruck by the deep pleasures of this show.

Although movie musicals are center stage right now, the road between Hollywood and the theater has always been a two-way street. The upcoming season promises its own song-and-dance "Shrek," "Death Takes a Holiday" and " Spider-Man" (music by Bono and U2). If they are hits, no doubt someone will suck them back as movie musicals.

And someday, just maybe, someone will have an original idea again.