Correct. Amanda had so little to do! It's quite shocking actually.

I would like to withdraw my statement about Meryl and TWTIA. She is good, it's just a bad choice that they took out that little segment to turn it into a trailer.

"Under Attack" is hardly a showpiece for the singer and it's really just a weak contrivance to get the second act started off with a big number. The chorus has a great musical hook, but the song doesn't add too much to the show that we don't already know and would just be excessive in the film which doesn't have an interval and therefore doesn't need something to get the audience re-invested in what's going on. Also, the film really doesn't need another big camp musical sequence. It treads the border of being bloated as it is.

Later days
David

But unlike anything else, it is a dream sequence which in a film opens up more possibilities for the director artistically than can be done on stage. It's not a necessary piece but I'd prefer the entertainment value of "Under Attack" over the scene cuts between rooms catching the characters at various points of their conversations. And if I'm not mistaken, "Under Attack" does illustrate well Sophie's anxiety in the form of a dream so when she wakes up, it makes her "blowing up" scene at her mother more plausible. I agree that it is not a major song for the character Sophie, but I think Amanda is entertaining and should have been given her full slate of songs.

I don't know how you can call the film bloated when it is not that much different from the stage show. If anything, they should have tossed "When All Is Said and Done" in favor of "Under Attack".

Although she contrived a generally delightful staging for the stage version of Mamma Mia, Phyllida Lloyd has very little idea of how to put a musical number on film and I don't think she'd know what to do with a number the artistically opens up possibilities for film. It's very clear in the film that the has problems with pacing the action, indicating that she directs for the moment without fully considering the bigger picture, and her handling of space remains, at times, stagebound rather than filmic. It's another good case, along with A Little Night Music and The Producers for not employing the director of the stage show to direct the film. (Don't get me wrong, I largely enjoyed the film but that enjoyment comes from the cast and their performances rather then anything that Lloyd does in her direction.)


Amanda Seyfried is good as Sophie, but she's not flawless. She's great as an emotional presence, she's doing the right things, she's easy to watch. Her vocals are generally good, but she has a slight, distracting tremolo at the end of many phrases and there also tends to be a uniformity in her vocal delivery. I don't think she or the character needs another song. Cutting the song does not make the argument with Meryl Streep's character, Donna, any less plausible. The audience knows that Sophie is anxious about the wedding; they don't need it reinforced over and over again as if it's some vital piece of new information.


The film feels bloated mainly because Lloyd, as mentioned above, doesn't know how to pace the material. The film is significantly different from the stage show in that Catherine Johnson, when retooling of the book for the screenplay, clearly couldn't decide who the leading lady is. Are we meant to be following Sophie or Donna's journey here? Mamma Mia! so clearly Sophie's journey onstage, but, in the film, the writing doesn't fully commit to either choice and Streep is so strong that its becomes difficult to tell whether the role is written up or if it's the actress making the role more prominent because of the weight she brings to it simply by being who she is. I don't think either of these issues was fully considered by Johnson or Lloyd in the making of the film.


The film could quite easily work without either and would be better off for it; "When All Is Said and Done" is made unbearable by Pierce Brosnan's performance of the song. It's a relief when Streep finally joins in on the vocal. That reception scene is a prime example of how the the film is padded, and the choice to put that song in - to touch base with Donna and Sam when we're quite ready to see Sohpie and Sky sail off to "I Have a Dream" - once again reflects and underlines Johnson's dilemma about whose story the audience is meant to follow.

Later days
David

I agree with most things you've said. I hated 'When all is said and done' because I was really anticipating 'Take a chance on me' and 'I have a dream - reprise'. It was kind of an anticlimax.