- 7
...an exuberant if not always brilliantly crafted adaptation of the campy ABBA musical.
—Lou Lumenick New York Post
- 7
While it ends up being a whimsical and quite wonderful experience on a superficial level, the vision behind the lens is radioactive in its undeniable cluelessness.
—Bill Gibron Reel
- 6
You'll have fun -- and Streep's rendition of "The Winner Takes It All" is a stunner -- but you'd have even more just singing along to your ABBA albums at home.
—Jason Lynch People
- 6
I won't really defend Mamma Mia!, but I will recommend how to watch it: Just stop rolling your eyes and listen.
—Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
- 6
You can have a perfectly nice time watching this spirited adaptation of the popular stage musical and, once the hangover wears off, acknowledge just how bad it is.
—A. O. Scott New York Times
- 6
...ebullient...
—Emily Rems Premiere
- 6
While it ends up being a whimsical and quite wonderful experience on a superficial level, the vision behind the lens is radioactive in its undeniable cluelessness.
—Bill Gibron filmcritic.com
- 5
Meryl Streep gives it her all, but even her moxie and the absurdly catchy music of ABBA can't smooth out this uneven musical.
—Dezhda Gaubert E!
- 5
...a hot mess of a movie...
—Ken Fox TV Guide
- 5
...clumsy, overwrought...
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 5
...a confection with enough sugar to dissolve teeth like an Alka-Seltzer tablet.
—Scott Tobias Onion AV Club
- 5
The film version has the advantage of possessing Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth and Julie Walters, but their assets are stretched fairly thin. And there are the wall-to-wall songs by ABBA, if you like that sort of thing. I don't, not much, with a few exceptions.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 5
...let?s hope the next Meryl Streep musical fares better, as does the next film by director Lloyd.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 4
A sage once advised being wary of movies in which the people on screen are having more fun than the people in the audience. Mamma mia, was that good advice.
—Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times
- 4
...a great big galumphing hoot. It's a classic example of the kind of film where the cast appears to be having a much better time than the audience.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 4
...a flashy, appealingly vulgar, tirelessly nostalgic pub crawl through a narrow street in 1970s pop history, when flower power turned to glitter rock.
—Ella Taylor LA Weekly
- 3
Thank you for the music. But your movie's kinda drab.
—Ella Taylor Village Voice
- 3
...is such a full-scale disaster in every way that it's hard to know what has held theatergoers' attention for so long.
—Dan Callahan Slant Magazine