On stage, Mamma Mia! is a fun time—bright, colorful, and full of all the right songs, dances, and charades to send you away smiling. But as we all know, just because something is a hit on Broadway doesn't mean it will do quite as well in Hollywood. And when it comes to Mamma Mia!'s jump from stage to screen this summer, it hits some places and misses others for an experience that is still fun but a little bit harder to fully embrace than its Broadway sister.

As always, a life full of singing and dancing does take a bit of getting used to. Dancing across the screen like a 21-year-old, Meryl Streep's Donna, while full of life, is a bit too much for me. Although I admire Pierce Brosnan for trying out something different, I just can't reconcile his standard action persona with his dreamy crooner, Sam Carmichael. But aside from Streep and Brosnan, the rest of Mamma Mia!'s cast is decidedly less awkward and much easier to stomach.

Amanda Seyfried proves that she is more than just a third place Mean Girl as the movie's youthful star Sophie. Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård play Sophie's other potential fathers, Harry and Bill, so well that I am reconsidering Firth's perpetual status as the perfect straight man. Donna's longtime friends Rosie and Tanya are brought to life by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski in a way that cannot help but make you want to shout, "You go girl!", every time they're on screen. And in general, the rest of the cast looks like they are having enough fun to mostly suspend the strange sense that it just isn't normal for entire crowds to spontaneously burst into song.

Then, there's the story. The perfect movie or show for a girls' night out, Mamma Mia! is a great story about mothers and daughters, best friends and girlfriends. Centered around the impending wedding of young Sophie, it's also about lovers and the love they share. Driven by Sophie's quest to find her father and the arrival of the three possible candidates, it is about fathers, daughters, and the value of knowing both where you're from and what your life has yielded. And tied up by reunions, reconciliations, and remembrances, it is about how amazing it is to share our lives with someone—even if we can do it all on our own.

Setting the story in motion and causing commotion from beginning to end is the question of who Sophie's father actually is.

"I feel like there's a part of me missing," Sophie tells her girlfriends. "And when I meet my dad, everything will fall into place."

But as her mother sees it, he's never been there; so why should the identity of Sophie's father matter? "It's about knowing who I am," Sophie tells her fiancè Sky (Dominic Cooper).

But as he tells her, "That doesn't come from finding your father; it comes from finding yourself."

And in many ways, both Donna and Sky are right. If anyone in Sophie's life has contributed to who she is, it is her mother. When it comes to Sophie finding herself, it is first and foremost about herself. No matter how great a relationship any of us have with our mother, father, best friend, or high school sweetheart, at one point or another, we all learn that we must figure out who we are on our own before we can truly know who we are in relation to anyone else.

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