Mamma Mia!

With an all-star cast commanded by Yale School of Drama graduate Meryl Streep, Mamma Mia!, the film adaptation of the admired and wildly popular musical, is the best feeling feel-good movie of the summer. The movie’s soundtrack - consisting of eighteen ABBA songs re-voiced by the film’s stars - is sure to have moviegoers everywhere dancing in their seats... and in the aisles, and possibly in their cars on the way home.

When Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), a young bride about to be wed, sends wedding invitations to the three possible fathers she discovers she has after ransacking her mother’s diary, she knows it’s a long shot that any of them will show up. The last thing she expects, however, is for all three men to appear in the hopes of seeing her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) again. And chaos ensues.

Donna, a single mother who runs a rustic hotel on a small Greek island, has invited her two longtime best friends to the wedding as well - the blunt and no-nonsense Rosie (Julie Walters) and the rich, serial bride Tanya (Christine Baranski). And when Donna catches sight of three men she never hoped to see again, she’s forced to tell her friends about Sophie’s three possible fathers and relive experiences of twenty years ago.

Twenty-four topsy-turvy hours is all it takes for new love to blossom and for aged romances to rekindle. The last half-hour or so of the movie is by far the most chaotic, with a switcheroo wedding and the most powerful songs of the entire movie. Mamma Mia! is an entertaining celebration of mother and daughter, lifelong friends, and newfound family.