Meryl Streep has previously sung on screen (most recently for Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion), but the upcoming Mamma Mia! is the first real musical of her 30 year career. Why all the singing and dancing, and why now? “It was to prove Pauline Kael wrong,” insists Stuart Jeffries.

In this Guardian interview, he suggests to Streep that her decision to take a lead role in this likely summer blockbuster was nothing but a long-delayed strike against the film critic who decades earlier complained that Streep acted only “from the neck up.” Amazingly, Streep essentially shrugs and says, “Yeah, maybe”––and then goes on to tie Kael’s criticism of the actresses body language to the film critic’s ethnic/economic insecurity. The actual, speculative diss after the jump.

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