“Charlotte has pudding in her Prada …”

Umm, yes, excuse me where’s my award? I actually watched it. LOL. Oh you ain’t heard nothin’ yet …

I didn’t realise while watching Mamma Mia and being swept away even more there than I imagined I might be (which was a lot) that it might need to become a new term for cinematic surprise. For – and I hope this significantly shocks anyone who knows me – I was most definitely Mamma Mia’d by this movie.

I never had any interest in the TV series – I’ve probably watched at most a third of three separate episodes, never making it beyond an ad break, lol. But I’m not a woman (not the kind “They” talk about, anyways …) or a gay man so that’s the way it should be, right? The movie sets up most things however, even while really even that wouldn’t be necessary because SATC is just one of those things you know of even if you avoided it like the plague for the last 10 years. It still surprised me how well the movie stands alone to a relative newcomer.

I still find it shallow – yes, even when, as I’m told, that means I’m “not getting it”. I get it. But call it principals, call it whatever you want, I decided a long time ago that I would never fall to the ease of telling jokes based on bad feeling, insult humour and the like – that line in West Side Story always resonated with me when Tony and Maria first meet and he asks if she’s making a joke by giving him the time of day, and she replies, “I’ve not yet learned to joke that way; I think now I never will.” And that’s me. So I don’t find much of these kinds of comedy amusing in the slightest even while I understand how most people do because it’s easier than taking that miserably honest stand. I could go on and on about such things as the image of the little girl surrounded by girl talk and repeating everything they say and why such rituals are the reason all these gender stereotypes perpetuate and over time become acceptable and so on and so on … but surprisingly, these weren’t my overriding thoughts while watching the movie. Like I said, there was a point at which these thoughts simply got Mamma Mia’d to one side LOL.

I think it was Mark Kermode initially (but I think a lot of people came running to his side and I assumed I’d be there with them when I ultimately watched the movie) who said the movie is just as shallow as ever and nothing more than a parade of labels etc devoid of meaning. Sure enough you get in the first hour what amounts to a filmed photoshoot of various designer wedding dresses and a parade of name dropping and product placement. But in the end I truly have to question exacty where those who can call a movie shallow that ends in the line, “dressed head to toe in Love – the only label that never goes out of style,” came to that conclusion.

For it’s in the second hour where the movie becomes what I kind of hoped it might’ve been but never once thought it would be. It’s kinda like Clerks II, the ten years later thing; “can we keep this act going like we used to? Yes, no, maybe?” It’s like what I wanted from Bratz which, though I loved it still, could’ve been just that little bit more questioning of the little things that are perhaps “wrong” about Bratz dolls. This movie shows the SATC girls’ tried and true lifestyles falling apart just a little with age. There are moments with each of them where they look downright hideous on the screen, and that’s okay. It really does go hand and hand with Mamma Mia in showing that there’s life after youth afterall.

Yep, I’m as shocked as you are. It’s far from the worst movie of the year. I laughed more than once; I cried more than once. I cried over a handbag LOL. But it’s what that handbag (err, purse) means in that moment, being given to someone who isn’t always clad in labels, that makes you cry. When Sarah Jessica Parker says, “it was the best money I ever spent” it’s got nothing to do with Louis Vuitton. This movie really does have something to say, and it really deserves a lot more effort to understand than most critics have given it – it’s their job afterall, if you ask me. Kermode asked listeners to write in to the Five Live show with their credentials and stuff, like in an effort to find intelligent people who saw this movie and enjoyed it. Well, I could mention my degree – whoops, I just did – but I’m still not as smart as he is when it comes to talking and writing about movies. I know that there’s something in this movie that’s worthwhile, but I’ve probably failed miserably at conveying that … but it’s not my job; I would love if someone like him could see this movie the way I saw it and talk about it. ‘Cos all I can really say about it is I loved it.

Jennifer Hudson and the little “sex!” girl were awesome too (and that’s really saying something about the little girl after that “coloring” scene was played to death in the promotional run-up to the movie’s release), I just realised I forgot to mention them.