There were moments, during the film version of Mamma Mia!, when my jaw dropped at the sheer awfulness of what was on the screen. Surely nobody can be making this and thinking it's good? After 45 minutes, I was tempted to stuff my press notes in my ears to drown out yet more karaoke versions of Abba.
But, but, but. There's something sly and clever going on here that makes me give the entire enterprise the benefit of my artistic doubts. Mamma Mia! knows it's dreadful, indeed it revels in its own crapness. Let's face it, Abba are terrible, but you know all the words.
It's not the film that we require to signal itself with knowing winks and irony - it's us, the audience who need the ironic double-take. Buying a ticket to see it is in itself an knowing, ironic act, a deliberate decision to apply for a passport to a Prospero's Island where they do things differently, where saccharine and implausibility and bad poetry are the stuff dreams are made of. Mamma Mia! is to film critics what S & M is to Max Mosley. Can you bear the pain?
The stage and film version director Phyllida Lloyd is clearly a very intelligent woman, and on this week's show she gives us her clearly thought-out artistic reasons behind every decision, from casting Pierce Brosnan to stereotyping the Greeks.
Also on this week's show, I meet Eddie Redmayne, a young British actor making his breakthrough as Julianne Moore's son in Savage Grace. We find out how Julianne works, how Robert de Niro directs and what it's like snog your (screen) mother and father in public.
I also reveal the winner of last week's great Getty Images competition, to win that print of Richard Burton and Liz Taylor on the set of Cleopatra.
As ever, let us know your thoughts on the blog - particularly if you want to stand up for yourself about Abba or ridicule others for loving it - and you can always email film.weekly@guardian.co.uk
