☆☆☆
In England, where I saw Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again as an afternoon respite on an unusually hot summer day, there's an old ad slogan that has entered everyday use: "It does exactly what it says on the tin." Meaning, of course, that sometimes the best you can say about something is that it does what it claims to do.
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again fits the description to a tee. Here we go again with the same corny plot contrivances, the same characters (most also presented here in their younger selves), the same beautiful scenery, the same ABBA overload. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again isn't as much a film as it is a series of ABBA songs strung together searching for a plot.
So what if the words to "Fernando" make absolutely no sense when sung as a love song? You think the movie is going to move its setting from the Greek islands to Mexico and recast its young lovers as civil war soldiers just to make the song work? Ha! The song will work, lyrics aside, because it has to work. And the cast is going to make it work, no matter what.
Because it's the second movie, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again doesn't get the benefit of containing ABBA's biggest hits -- they filled up the original Mamma Mia. But because any collection of ABBA songs isn't worth its salt without "Dancing Queen" and "Super Trouper," they pop up again here, entirely unworried about being recycled from the first film -- these songs are the reason the audience is here, and the one thing Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again would be loathe to do is disappoint its audience.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who is trying to rebuild and reopen an island resort in Greece. Her husband (Dominic Cooper) is a work-absorbed schmuck who values a business trip to New York over his wife's endeavors, which are meant to -- SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO REALLY CARE ABOUT A SPOILER IN A MAMMA MIA MOVIE -- help keep alive the memory of Sophie's mother Donna (Meryl Streep), who has died before the start of the movie.
Amusing shenanigans take place. Sophie invites everyone who's anyone to a grand, all-star, exclusive gala, but a freak storm wipes out everything, and while that happens the film jumps back and forth in time to tell concurrent stories of both Sophie and her misadventures, as well as younger versions of Donna (Lily James in flashbacks) and her BFFs.
All three of Sophie's possible fathers (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skårsgard) try to make their way to the island, while the movie offers up more detail on how Donna got pregnant with Sophie and why she has never been sure -- even in the days of Ancestry.com and 23 and Me -- which one of them is Sophie's real dad.
If you want to know more about the story, well, you're probably at the wrong movie. Story is irrelevant. Singing skills are irrelevant (though better this time around than in the first). What matters is what the setting looks like and what the people look like, and they both look just wonderful. Spectacular, at times. The men who fall over themselves to have sex with Sophie are as breathtaking as the scenery, and blandly perfect for a movie like this.
Eventually, some things happen and then some other things happen, and about every three minutes there is another ABBA song that (more or less) fits the action. All three of the fathers show up, and there's a ton of happiness and giddiness and then Cher shows up as Sophie's grandmother.
This is indeed the Cher who spent several years in the 1980s and 1990s building her acting chops and winning an Oscar, but that's not the version of Cher who's in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. This Cher is the one who headlines in Las Vegas. The icon, or the caricature, depending on which way you feel about her.
She's the one who accomplishes the not-insignificant feat of making "Fernando" sound like it fits. She's a fun addition to the experience, but also an odd one -- Mamma Mia is all about the interaction between the characters (and the songs, obviously), and Cher almost looks like she's been digitally composited into most scenes. Look at long shots of scenes that involve her, and she's nowhere to be found, as if the few moments of her role were shot in isolation from the rest of the film, which may indeed have been the case.
It's a minor spoiler that Streep shows up for an extended cameo toward the end of the film, which leads to an unexpectedly honest and emotional climax that finishes things up on a somewhat bittersweet note, or would if there weren't one final, plotless song-and-dance extravaganza tacked on to the film.
Well, wait, "tacked on" sounds so negative. And there's no negativity allowed in the presence of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. That final song-and-dance routine is pitch-perfect, exactly what the audience needs and wants. The 6-year-old girls who were dancing and prancing around the aisles when I saw Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again perfectly captured what the film wants to do and what it succeeds at doing -- giving everyone a good time.
Objectively speaking, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again isn't actually all that good. It has a far-fetched plot filled with holes, it features bland and wholesome characters who don't really do much in a story that would have felt stretched as a 22-minute sitcom episode, and, when you get right down to it, it doesn't even take place in Greece -- it was shot on Croatia's island of Vis.
You don't go see Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again expecting it to be anything other than what it is. Or, at least, you shouldn't. It does exactly what it says on the tin. No more, no less.
Viewed July 20, 2018 -- Odeon Covent Garden
1745
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again fits the description to a tee. Here we go again with the same corny plot contrivances, the same characters (most also presented here in their younger selves), the same beautiful scenery, the same ABBA overload. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again isn't as much a film as it is a series of ABBA songs strung together searching for a plot.
So what if the words to "Fernando" make absolutely no sense when sung as a love song? You think the movie is going to move its setting from the Greek islands to Mexico and recast its young lovers as civil war soldiers just to make the song work? Ha! The song will work, lyrics aside, because it has to work. And the cast is going to make it work, no matter what.
Because it's the second movie, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again doesn't get the benefit of containing ABBA's biggest hits -- they filled up the original Mamma Mia. But because any collection of ABBA songs isn't worth its salt without "Dancing Queen" and "Super Trouper," they pop up again here, entirely unworried about being recycled from the first film -- these songs are the reason the audience is here, and the one thing Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again would be loathe to do is disappoint its audience.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who is trying to rebuild and reopen an island resort in Greece. Her husband (Dominic Cooper) is a work-absorbed schmuck who values a business trip to New York over his wife's endeavors, which are meant to -- SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO REALLY CARE ABOUT A SPOILER IN A MAMMA MIA MOVIE -- help keep alive the memory of Sophie's mother Donna (Meryl Streep), who has died before the start of the movie.
Amusing shenanigans take place. Sophie invites everyone who's anyone to a grand, all-star, exclusive gala, but a freak storm wipes out everything, and while that happens the film jumps back and forth in time to tell concurrent stories of both Sophie and her misadventures, as well as younger versions of Donna (Lily James in flashbacks) and her BFFs.
All three of Sophie's possible fathers (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skårsgard) try to make their way to the island, while the movie offers up more detail on how Donna got pregnant with Sophie and why she has never been sure -- even in the days of Ancestry.com and 23 and Me -- which one of them is Sophie's real dad.
If you want to know more about the story, well, you're probably at the wrong movie. Story is irrelevant. Singing skills are irrelevant (though better this time around than in the first). What matters is what the setting looks like and what the people look like, and they both look just wonderful. Spectacular, at times. The men who fall over themselves to have sex with Sophie are as breathtaking as the scenery, and blandly perfect for a movie like this.
Eventually, some things happen and then some other things happen, and about every three minutes there is another ABBA song that (more or less) fits the action. All three of the fathers show up, and there's a ton of happiness and giddiness and then Cher shows up as Sophie's grandmother.
This is indeed the Cher who spent several years in the 1980s and 1990s building her acting chops and winning an Oscar, but that's not the version of Cher who's in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. This Cher is the one who headlines in Las Vegas. The icon, or the caricature, depending on which way you feel about her.
She's the one who accomplishes the not-insignificant feat of making "Fernando" sound like it fits. She's a fun addition to the experience, but also an odd one -- Mamma Mia is all about the interaction between the characters (and the songs, obviously), and Cher almost looks like she's been digitally composited into most scenes. Look at long shots of scenes that involve her, and she's nowhere to be found, as if the few moments of her role were shot in isolation from the rest of the film, which may indeed have been the case.
It's a minor spoiler that Streep shows up for an extended cameo toward the end of the film, which leads to an unexpectedly honest and emotional climax that finishes things up on a somewhat bittersweet note, or would if there weren't one final, plotless song-and-dance extravaganza tacked on to the film.
Well, wait, "tacked on" sounds so negative. And there's no negativity allowed in the presence of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. That final song-and-dance routine is pitch-perfect, exactly what the audience needs and wants. The 6-year-old girls who were dancing and prancing around the aisles when I saw Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again perfectly captured what the film wants to do and what it succeeds at doing -- giving everyone a good time.
Objectively speaking, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again isn't actually all that good. It has a far-fetched plot filled with holes, it features bland and wholesome characters who don't really do much in a story that would have felt stretched as a 22-minute sitcom episode, and, when you get right down to it, it doesn't even take place in Greece -- it was shot on Croatia's island of Vis.
You don't go see Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again expecting it to be anything other than what it is. Or, at least, you shouldn't. It does exactly what it says on the tin. No more, no less.
Viewed July 20, 2018 -- Odeon Covent Garden
1745
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