“Mamma Mia!” isn’t your typical movie, not by a longshot. Movie musicals remain a rare breed, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
Not only is the film, which opens Friday, unabashedly aimed at women, but the bulk of its stars are all well past their 40th birthday.
It’s like wrinkle-palooza, but at the risk of being PC I found it all pretty darn refreshing. It helps you’ve got some old pros on board – Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan and Julie Walters lead the charge into musical battle.
I think it’s natural to want to see young, attractive people in movies and television. It’s supposed to be escapism, and if we want hardcore reality we can stare at our window and watch our elderly neighbors straining to shovel their sidewalk or mow their lawn.
But Hollywood is so youth-obsessed it’s novel to see a film that bucks the trend so boldly. And Streep and co. are aging graciously. The Oscar Queen herself looks her age … but to this untrained eye she doesn’t appear to have been morphed beyond repair by a surgeon’s scalpel.
(Photo: Meryl Streep dances up a storm in the movie musical “Mama Mia.”)
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s all about the boomers. 40+ is the age they identify with now, just as when they were 12 they were identifying with older teens.
You may be right, K. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be sick of all those middle aged types in movies. But by then I’ll be middle aged, too!