Mamma Mia

"Somehow, the cumulative weight of this terribleness coming off the screen, and these indestructible songs – suddenly you’re going, 'I've gone with this! I’ve gone all pink!'" - Mark Kermode, BBC Radio 5live

The one film so bad it's good (specifically, "so awful it's brilliant"), and that Mark watched for the first half hour in shock, literally with his head between his knees - but then suddenly, SCHWUM, the world rearranged itself, bad became good, the planet turned upside down, the sun orbited the Earth and Mark cried twice and decided he loved it.

Mark's plot summary was done in the style of the film itself - to wit:

“Muriël Strepsil is an aging dancing queen (former chiquitita) who has a daughter who has a dream, and says 'I do, I do, I do' to her honey honey – but discovers that her mother doesn't know which particular man after midnight gave her a child.

So she decides to take a chance on three possible boyfriends who she invites to the Greek island without telling her mamma mia – to the shock and amazement of Muriël Strepsil. Voulez vous?”

Justine Green enjoyed Mark's all-singing, all-dancing, Swedish Chef-inspired review so much that she was incapable of reading the news for several minutes, meaning Simon has to fill in by reading a sheaf of emails.

Towards the end of the programme on which Mamma Mia had been reviewed, a listener, Howard Davies, emailed in to say he was "inchoate in disbelief that [Mark] likes Abba." Mark tore up the email.

The film contains Piers Brosnan singing like the QE2 docking in Southampton. When the Good Lady Professor Her Indoors and Mark's daughter went to see it at Redruth in Cornwall, she reported that the moment that Brosnan began singing the entire audience burst out laughing. Mark liked to think that his review had had some role in this.

Mamma Mia is the ne plus ultra of a film that starts out terribly but gets better. Discussing the question of walking out, Mark said it was the one time when suddenly a really, really bad film got good.