Mamma Mia sequel is harmless fun

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This article was published 20/07/2018 (2801 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ten years after the first Mamma Mia! had everyone doing their best singing-into-the-hairbrush Dancing Queen routine, this second round of ABBA-inspired comedy-romance feels fun, fizzy and sweetly inevitable. I mean, when the phrase “Here we go again” is actually in the song lyrics, what are you going to do?

Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again is not a conventionally good film, being clunky and clumsy, with a random storyline and rudimentary character development. But in its own giddy, silly, spangly-pants way, this ABBA-licious jukebox musical is irresistible.

Scripted by Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and Ol Parker (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), who also directs, Here We Go Again is a prequel and sequel at the same time. (You know, like Godfather II.) The present-day storyline centres on Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, back from the original) as she prepares for a grand reopening of the family-run hotel on the glorious, made-up Greek island of Kalokairi.

The other storyline flashes back to her mother Donna (Lily James of Downton Abbey) as she arrives on the island as a free-spirited young woman in the late 1970s.

Greece is mostly an exotic, escapist backdrop here, except for one bizarre moment when a fisherman at a bar sardonically declares: “We drink in joyless surrender to our economic fate.”

Sophie’s plotline is pretty basic. Her hotel management mostly involves looking at flower arrangements, and she spends the rest of her time dealing with her three possible dads, Harry, Sam and Bill (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard), and her mom’s oldest friends, Tanya and Rosie (Christine Baranski and Julie Walters). She also wonders about a possible rift with her boyfriend Sky (Dominic Cooper).

Playing Donna, James is tasked with being the young Meryl Streep, which is, of course, impossible. But she is upbeat and buoyant, flirting convincingly with her three male leads, played by Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan and Hugh Skinner as, respectively, the young Sam, Bill and Harry.

Supporters of Team Harry will be particularly pleased with Skinner (Poldark and W1A), who not only pulls off lots of uptight English charm but also sings better than Firth ever could, belting out Waterloo in one of the best setpieces in the movie.

Parker pulls off a couple of these big production numbers, but at the same time, the song selection has tightened up. There are a few reprises, including Dancing Queen and that showstopping Waterloo, but otherwise we’re way beyond ABBA: Gold here, drawing from the Swedish supergroup’s second tier, with mixed results.

When I Kissed the Teacher feels like an odd choice for an opener, especially these days, but My Love, My Life, which marks the film’s emotional climax — and had half the theatre in tears, as far as I could tell — is a lovely surprise. Cher — who shows up in the third act but really makes her presence known — pairs with Andy Garcia to perform Fernando, offering a magnificent, ardent, full-on embrace of the song’s inescapable cheesiness.

Here We Go Again is fundamentally a woman-driven movie.

It focuses on mothers and daughters — “It’s not easy being a mother,” Sophie says. “If it was, fathers would do it” — and on female friendship, with plenty of sexed-up zingers from Baranski and earthy comic support from Walters (“I think my soulmate might be carbs”).

Mostly the men stand around, looking awkward — but determined! — whenever they are expected to sing. Watching Firth intone Super Trouper’s “Su-pah-pah, Trou-pah-pah” chorus in the credit sequence is a piquant sort of pleasure, like seeing Mr. Darcy show up for karaoke night. And Brosnan, who made a touchingly incompetent singing debut in the 2008 original, doesn’t seem to have taken voice lessons in the intervening decade.

That is actually part of the franchise’s optimistic and outgoing appeal. Cast members — except for Cher — have not been picked for their voices. “You’ve got to work on your breathing, and you’re a bit pitchy,” Cher tells Sophie at one point.

Ultimately, the Mamma Mia! experience is not about musical expertise. It’s about singalong enthusiasm — cheery, poppy and possibly a little tipsy on mid-range rosé.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca