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Quotes

Donna: You sound like you're having fun already.

Ali: Oh, we are!

Donna: I used to have fun!

Ali: Oh, we know!

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Mistakes

During the last half of the movie Donna wears a red sweeping shawl over her shoulders, with her outfit for Sophie's wedding. Many times the position of the shawl is not consistent during shots - most noticeable after she walks Sophie down the aisle, then sits down. See more...

Trivia

When you first see Sam he is supposed to be in America, but when you see out of the window as he is leaving, you can see the Gherkin building in London. He is actually in the Lloyd's Building, but to add to the illusion of being in America, he is picked up by a Yellow Cab. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Mamma Mia! (2008) - 20 corrections

starring Christine Baranski, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard (add more)

Genres: Comedy, Musical, Romance

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Trivia
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Towards the end of Dancing Queen when the women are running down to the pier, Tanya is wearing the blue tu tu skirt around her thighs in one shot and then the next it is up by her shoulders. [This is intentional. Being a fashionable person, she changes the way she uses the petticoat as an accessory throughout the song. It starts above her bust as a babydoll dress, then she moves it to her thighs to look like a fishtail dress, then turns it into a cape over her shoulders, then finally takes it off completely to swing around. You don't see her do it on camera, but it's not like the scene is in real-time.]
Edit
When Sophie is getting ready for her wedding, during the scene when Donna is painting her toe nails, Sophie's hair is down. In the next shot when her and her mom are looking at pictures and laughing, her hair is braided. Then Sophie is looking in the mirror in the next shot and her hair isn't braided. [This scene is a montage that is meant to represent the period of time it took for Donna to help Sophie to get ready. She even says before the song, "We have time" and then there is a shot of her playing with Sophie's hair as if consulting with her how to style it. It's perfectly plausible that they would have gone through a few hairstyles while getting ready before deciding on a final look.]
Edit
When Harry, Sam, and Bill are in the goat house and Sophie leaves, Harry has a pair of sunglasses tucked into his shirt. When Donna peeks up through the floor, the sunglasses are gone. [Harry has enough time to simply take them off the shirt before Donna sees them.]
Edit Corrected by chrissepia
During the song "Take a chance on me," you see a bunch of people dancing on the crack in the courtyard. Yet when the water breaks through, there is nobody around it. [There was a rumble just before the water sprayed out of the crack. The guests may have stopped dancing and moved then.]
Edit Time
When Donna is talking to her best friends in her bedroom, you can see a crew member reflected on the bathroom glass window. [I've just watched through the scenes where Donna and her friends are in the bedroom, and I didn't see any crewmembers' reflections. Please be more specific as to when this occurs (which scene, which line etc.).]
Edit Corrected by littlestar
When Sophie and Sky are singing/dancing on the beach, sky is holding a cigar. At one point when he makes to kiss Sophie, he appears to be burning her hair with the lit end of the cigar. And when he takes a puff in the next shot when standing on a rock, it is the wrong way round. [This is not a mistake, the cigar is not lit. The end that he puts near Sophie's hair that looks like it is lit is the label on the cigar. You can see this when he is standing on the rock afterwards.]
Edit Time
In the early scenes, where the invitations are posted, the mail box is a French one - but the film is set in Greece. [It's just a plain yellow mail box, they exist anywhere. None of this movie was shot in France, anyway, all the scenes were either shot in a studio in London or in Greece.]
Edit Corrected by littlestar
When Sophie is singing 'Honey Honey' in her bedroom, Ali and Lisa are singing with her - at first. But then Sophie goes to the balcony and Ali and Lisa are gone. [You see them slip behind the walls on each side of Sophie, it's not like they magically dissappear into thin air. Not very likely behaviour to suddenly hide like that, maybe, but definitely not a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by littlestar Time
When Sam reaches out to touch Donna's face at the end of the wedding and just before Sam begins singing, Sam has his suit jacket on. When Sam starts singing, his suit jacket is off and his dress shirt sleeves are rolled up. [It's a cut to another scene when Sam would have had his jacket off at the wedding reception.]
Edit
Harry is playing Donna's guitar on the boat. Harry is left-handed, the guitar is strung left-handed, but Donna is right-handed. Has the guitar been wrongly strung for 20 years? Didn't Donna notice? [It doesn't take long to restring a guitar. Takes me 10 minutes. Harry could restring it. Not a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
The whole wedding bit is fraught with mistakes. It should be said that since the film is set in what I can at best call a heightened reality, this does not matter much, but it ought to be said anyway. The priest conducting the ceremony is Catholic, yet Greece is predominantly Orthodox. A Catholic priest would not ordinarily be able to conduct a wedding in an Orthodox church. Also, Sam and Donna would not be able to marry in that scene. First of all, there are things which need to be done before it is legal for two people to marry and it is therefore not possible to marry minutes after proposing. Furthermore, and more importantly, Catholic priests can only conduct religious weddings which are not recognised by the state. This means that for a priest to declare two people man and wife, they have to fulfill the Catholic requirements for marriage. Sam, who's divorced, does not. [Where was it mentioned that it was a Catholic priest? Just because he is an Irish actor does not a Catholic priest make.]
Edit
During the song "Mamma Mia!", when Donna is on the roof of the goat house, you can see that the surface she is standing on is stone or concrete with no gaps in it. But when the camera goes to the three fathers inside the goat house, there is light shining through the ceiling as though it were made of wooden panels. If there was stone on top of the wood, there would be no light coming through. [It's clear from the outside shots that the roof is indeed made of panels with gaps in between, not concrete. There is, however, a grey rug on top of the panels in a small area, wich makes it look a bit like concrete. But there are still plenty of uncovered panels for the light to come through.]
Edit
After Tanya and Rosie have arrived and Donna and them walk up the steps and across the courtyard, much of the audio heard is out of sync with the actor's lips. [I've checked this carefully and it isn't true.]
Edit
Harry is wearing a life jacket in the paddle boat, but during the "Our Last Summer" montage, all three guys and Sophie are seen jumping off a cliff into the water without life jackets. Why would Harry need one in the paddle boat when it is already presumed he can swim? [Health and Saftey. I am an extremly strong swimmer, but when I went sailing I had to wear a life jacket.]
Edit Corrected by Starchild
In flashback sequences of Sophie's mum and her boyfriends, the clothing styles and language seem to be from the 1960s or 70s. But this doesn't make any sense in the chronology of the film. Clothing styles and comments about the Internet indicate that the film is set in the present day. Sophie is aged 20, which means that she would have been conceived in about 1988 - a long time after kaftans and Flower Power went out of fashion. [And my mother still wears clothes from the 1980's because she likes it. Sophie's mom is shown as someone who "marches to her own drum."]
Edit Corrected by shortdanzr
After Donna sings 'Winner Takes It All", she turns and walks away from the church for which she was orignally headed. In the next scene, however, she is seen climbing the steps towards the church in the opposite, and correct, direction. [There are two ways of getting to the stairs that lead to the church - going the way they were heading or going down to the rocks by the ocean and then up from there. Both Donna and Sam chose the latter.]
Edit
During one of Sam and Sophie's private talks, Sam says he has two grown sons. He went home and got married after Sophie had been conceived, therefore his oldest son could not be older than 19. [The age of 18 is considered to be the age a child becomes an adult and thus considered a grown child. It is indeed physically possible he has children the ages of 18 and 19 or even twins.]
Edit Corrected by OneHappyHusky
Right after Sam, Bill, and Harry arrive and they are all in the goat house with Sophie, they hear Donna humming something, which prompts Sophie to run out abruptly. Listen more closely to what Donna's humming. It's "Fernando", another hit ABBA song. [The entire soundtrack to the film consists of ABBA songs. Pointing out one of them, even one less obvious that those that are actually sung, is not a valid use of trivia.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
During the song "Slipping Through My Fingers", Sophie is walking out of the shower and has cut herself shaving. She then lies back on the bed and Donna puts a band-aid on the cut. Right after she does that, there's another shot of Sophie, who leans back, and at that point, her nipple is briefly visible peeking out from her towel. [At the moment, this is trivia, and not terribly interesting trivia at that. Please explain why this should be considered a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
Based on cast lists from the Internet Broadway Database and the Internet Movie Database, not a single cast member from any Broadway production of "Mamma Mia!" appears in the movie. [This is far too general and common to be valid trivia. There are tons of movie musicals that do not contain anyone from the original broadway cast.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore