Still haven't seen Mamma Mia! (I've started using the exclamation point even though it makes my inner grammar nazi gnash its teeth) and that makes my soul cry. I was on the phone with my cousin tonight and we tentatively discussed seeing it together next week.
Finished Kramer vs Kramer yesterday, more on that later.
Instead of finishing The French Lieutenant's Woman tonight (I know, I'm never going to finish this), I researched just how awesome Mamma Mia! actually is.
*side note: I really don't know why I've taken this as a personal campaign. If anything, tonight has shown me the film is doing just fine on its own. But I'm taking each bad review personally.
So, New York Times wasn't so kind to it, for, in my opinion, extremely stupid reasons. And really, the same reasons I've been seeing in the other bad reviews. The main reason for hate is it's silly. Or, even better, it's entertainment. What the hell do people want out of movies? I really like movies that make me think, I really do. But I don't want to see them all the time. Isn't it a bit silly to hate on a movie for doing exactly what it promised to do? It's not supposed to be Shakespeare or Hemingway for that matter, it's supposed to be fun. I liked Roger Ebert's review because he acknowledged the movie for what it is and said it wasn't his sort of thing but still tried to give it a fair look.
I really shouldn't be saying all this without seeing the movie.
So, some other stuff I can say without seeing it. CBS news critic David Edelstein was vicious. Really. In this scenario he's Lord Voldemort to the Times' Peter Pettigrew. I thought that was unnecessary, but oddly enough, a majority of the comments on the article agreed with me. There were seven pages of comments, and because I have no life, I read them all. 3.2% of the comments agreed with Mr. Edelstein's assessment, 93.4% didn't agree at all. Some even went as far as to attack Mr. Edelstein and his credibility as a reviewer. Not that I condone that at all... And 3.2% of the comments had absolutely no relation to the article and I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. I just thought that was an interesting set of statistics.
Mamma Mia! also did better than Hairspray (last summer's piece of awesome) on its opening weekend. According to ABC News, Hairspray grossed $27.5 million. Mamma Mia! sailed by that mark with $ 27.6 million. Okay, not quite sailed, but close enough.
And, the strongest proof that Mamma Mia! is awesome is that The Stranger liked it. The Stranger doesn't like anything. Okay, I'm sure they've liked some stuff, I just can't come up with any examples at the moment. But the review of Mamma Mia! was strangely positive. According to reviewer Lindy West, her expectations were so low "they dug a hole all the way to China and were walking around upside down asking for a fork" but still, Mamma Mia! "entertained the shit out of me." Not bad. Her only complaint was that, for a musical about Abba, there weren't enough gay characters. The song Mamma Mia will always remind me of the ending scene of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, so maybe Lindy West has a point.
Okay. Kramer vs. Kramer. Ten word summary: wife leaves husband and son, later wants custody of kid. I don't have much to say. I saw it. It took me three days to get through because it's a subject that terrifies me. My parents are together and I can quite confidently say they're staying together, but the idea of them splitting up still haunts me in my sleep.
As my dad said to me when I started this movie, "It's Dustin Hoffman's movie." It is, he owns it. I found out later, he was pretty involved in writing it. So, without Dustin Hoffman this movie wouldn't have been that great. But I don't think it would have been that great if Joanna Kramer had been played by anyone other than Meryl Streep. It's a balance. Neither parent is perfect but neither parent is the axis of evil either. If the woman had simply been a creepy raving bitch it wouldn't have been realistic. And I think the reason Meryl makes it work is something she said in the documentary in the special features. I don't remember the exact wording but she said she's always felt the need to defend her characters in some way. And that's what she does in this movie. We have sympathy for her or we lose the humanity of the movie. There's got to be a pull to both of them.
Ultimately it's a film about love. From the parental perspective, loving the kid to want them around all the time and knowing what's best for them. Loving them enough to let go. And something Dustin Hoffman said in the special features documentary. The idea that love doesn't always end with a marriage, no matter how much you want it to.
I want to watch this one again later, lots to think about.
Hopefully finishing The French Lieutenant's Woman tomorrow. It includes my favorite Meryl Streep hairstyle so far.
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