Mamma Meryl!

My love for Abba is no secret but I can't say that I'm a fan of the Mamma Mia! musical: Yes, there is such a thing as too much cheese, even for me, and having an artificial context and a fixed meaning forced upon these songs is disconcerting.

That said, I'm kinda psyched about the movie version (out summer 2008) because it stars Meryl Streep, with whom I'm in love all over again these days. If you're familiar with La Streep's career, you know she can sing—she started in musicals at the Public Theater in the 70s and has sung in some movies, most notably Postcards from the Edge and A Prairie Home Companion; and of course she sang in Mother Courage in Central Park a couple of summers ago.

There are two trailers for the Mamma Mia! movie online right now. Typically, the American trailer shows a lot less Meryl than the English one, as if the movie was all about the pretty young thing. It also does not show Meryl dancing or singing, while the British one does. It's as if they were afraid of letting Americans know that the older woman has a pretty sizeable part, and that it's not all about the young blondie.

The British trailer also includes Meryl's follow-up to her line "You sound like you're having fun already" (a muttered "I used to have fun"), while oddly the American one doesn't; it's really a one-two punch, so leaving the second part makes no sense. It's not like we needed more evidence than American trailers are terrible but, well, there it is.