Play It Again, Björn
Ten years ago, director Phyllida Lloyd's Mamma Mia! became the highest grossing live-action musical of all time, and the highest grossing film directed by a woman (only to be surpassed on both counts last year by the Beauty and the Beast remake and Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman). The 2008 film is rough around the edges, featuring some bumpy singing from Pierce Brosnan, and is a bit aimless in its plot. Nonetheless, the Meryl Streep-led cast is incredibly charming, and the ABBA tunes are mostly good fun. It's the kind of movie that you know could be better, but why not just surrender to its charms and enjoy the ride? Writer/director Ol Parker, the man behind the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, delivers a sequel that is similar in its lightweight, good nature, but just slick enough to distinguish itself as an improvement, if not an essential story.
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again—which has charmed critics despite taking the obvious headline for their reviews—picks up the story five years after the original. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has built out her mother's (Streep) villa into a full-fledged resort, and is preparing for a grand opening party that will honor Donna's legacy. As those plans unfold, the film flashes back to the summer of 1979, when a young Donna (Lily James) graduates from Oxford and encounters the three young men who will become the possible fathers to her daughter. The marketing for Here We Go Again has been especially misleading, putting Streep front and center in every possible way; she does appear, but only briefly. Thankfully, Lily James is perfect as the infectiously free-wheeling young Donna, and the rest of the cast, new and old, bolster things enough to make you forget that Streep was the main draw for the first film.
But of course the other marquee draw is ABBA, and their songs remain a toe-tapping joy. Parker has done a terrific job finding a way to build his story around the music to overcome one of the first film's greatest weaknesses. A pitfall of jukebox musicals, which build a narrative around pre-existing songs that otherwise don't coexist, is stuffing in the popular stuff in the flimsiest possible manner. It's fun to watch Meryl Streep sing "Money, Money, Money" and fantasize about living a care free life, but it doesn't advance the story. It tells us she could use some money and a little help, but that's it. As writer/director Christopher McQuarrie recently tweeted, story is emotion and plot is information. The information we get from that three minute number could be boiled down to one line of dialogue. Here We Go Again gives almost every song an emotional anchor in the story, even if it's not a serious number.
The choreography also takes a step up from the first Mamma Mia!, which at times featured flailing rather than dancing. Part of the fun of ABBA and these movies is making you feel like you're invited to a party where anyone can sing and dance along, but when the people you're watching had $75 million to make this feel-good fantasy, you want it to have some polish. It's evident from the first song, when Lily James throws off a cap and gown to lead her stuffy graduation in a rocking rendition of "When I Kissed the Teacher," that we're in good hands. Parker does an admirable job in staging and filming each number, from a silly "Waterloo" seduction in a Napoleon-themed restaurant to a joyous rendition of "Dancing Queen" that features a parade of boats and Stellan Skarsgård and Colin Firth doing their best Kate and Leo from Titanic.
Just like Sophie and the Hotel Bella Donna staff, the team behind Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is throwing a party, and we're all invited. This film is silly—though in a more finely tuned way than the first film—sweet, and often quite melancholy. It's emotions are honest, and that's really all I can ask of a musical. It makes everything else this film gives you gravy. Cher doesn't need to show up in the third act as Sophie's estranged grandmother, in fact it does nothing for the story or plot, but why not? When she starts to sing, you'll shrug off any of those doubts (or the fact that she's only three years older than Streep). This movie is the perfect summertime escapist musical, and that's all it needs to be.