I saw Mamma Mia yesterday. It was pretty horrific, but I sat through it anyway. There's nothing like 60 year olds acting like teenagers and singing songs they lack the skills to pull off to remind you of mortality.

I like Meryl Streep. She was good in Prarie Home Companion, but I think she was miscast in this role. If you're going to put a musical onscreen you should probably get a singer who can act rather than the other way around.

I would imagine someone like Olivia Newton John could have done a flawless version of ABBA songs, because her voice is very similar and she's actually a professional singer.

Amanda Seyfried, Streep's daughter in the film, was about the only one who could sing, outside occasional harmonies from some of the cast, and surprisingly, Colin Firth doing a nice job with some accoustic guitar number.

But Pierce Brosnan should not be singing on camera. I'm not sure he should even be singing in the shower.

Hey, I've got an idea, next time you want to make a film of middle aged people singing and dancing, why not audition them to see if they can sing and dance, instead of taking any big name you can get, so we don't have to watch sad old people creaking and croaking around like some geriatric version of Bye Bye Birdie?

I like those songs. Supposedly Benny Andersson was even an Executive producer, but I have to wonder what he thought of the finished product, or was he too busy counting the box office returns of a moronic story poorly performed by big name dinosaurs who were miscast in a musical?

 If the story is implausible, it doesnt matter if you have good actors anyway. The entire cast would have done fine with a standard drama, but this was essentially a Geritol crowd attempting a music video. Sad. They will all probably be acting for years to come, but hopefully not singing and dancing.

And some will probably ask why I sat through the whole thing. I guess for the same reason I sat through Shindler's List. It was an unspeakable crime against humanity but I wanted to see how the story turned out. Actually a musical version of Shindler's List would probably be more tastefully done than Mamma Mia.