What more proof could one need to accept the fact that Meryl Streep is the best actress alive, if not her performance in ‘Mama Mia,’ a musical inspired by the songs that made ABBA one of the greatest pop groups of the 70s. And even if the musical is not really great, Meryl certainly is, performing extraordinarily well for a person how is not very familiar with this type of show.

Donna, played by Meryl Streep, is a former rock singer who has now retired in Greece, where she owns and manages a resort. Her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried ) is about to marry her fiancé, but wants to know who her father is before taking the big step. She starts to look into her mother’s diaries and discovers that Donna had relationships with three men around the time Sophie was conceived. She then invites the three men to her wedding, without her mother knowing anything about it.

The musical is very light and has a lot of amusing situations, as the viewer gets more and more caught in Sophie’s search for her father, and her mother’s reactions toward the three former lovers. However, the movie didn’t get very good reviews from critics who said that it is much too obvious that director Phyllida Lloyd, who is a regular on Broadway, is making her film debut with ‘Mama Mia.’

Meryl Streep, however, is at her best as she radiates with energy and joy in every scene of the movie. The actress, who sings 9 of the 17 tracks of the musical said that she was thrilled to act in it, and that she had been a fan of the show ever since she took her little daughter to see it, almost 7 years ago.