You know what I don’t want in my feel-good wine mom movie? DEATH.
It took me almost 32 years to realize I kind of love disco music. “Rasputin” has rocketed into my Top 5 feel-good songs of all time, and once I accepted that discovery, I slowly realized that I actually enjoyed ABBA. I give Just Dance 100% of the credit for this development instead of Mamma Mia!, however, because I didn’t like the original movie the first time I watched it. At all.
This could be because I inherently dislike Jukebox musicals. Across The Universe kind of ruined them for me. The only reason I watched it was because Eddie Izzard played a small part, so I tried to work against my preexisting bias against The Beatles for their sake. And boy, that was not enough to get me through it. I just could not force myself to give a shit about a flimsy romance told through songs I could take or leave.
So, several years later, when I finally got the nerve to give Mamma Mia! a try, I did not give it a fair shot. I focused too much on how ridiculous the plot was, how Pierce Brosnan cannot sing for the life of him, and how I did not enjoy ABBA one bit. But, coming off of several weeks of only thinking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, this rewatch was a breath of fresh air. Sure, it’s not going to change the world, and it doesn’t feature pyrotechnic vocals or anything, but it’s fun. It’s a good night out with your girlfriends drinking chardonnay and fantasizing about 3 attractive men all vying for your attention, even 20 years after your affair ended, in one of the most gorgeous places on the planet.
But Mamma Mia! is not the movie I get to talk about in this post. Oh no, the original Mamma Mia! did not make this list. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again did, however, and here we are talking about just the weirdest tonal pivot cash-grab sequel I can think of.
For those uninitiated, Mamma Mia! is about Sophie’s quest to find her biological father. Her mother, Donna, played by Meryl Streep, had a very eventful summer back in 1979, leaving Sophie, played by Amanda Seyfried, with three possible fathers: Pierce Brosnan/Sam, Colin Firth/Harry, and Stellan Skarsgård/Bill, respectively. Donna does not divulge this information to these men, and instead raises Sophie by herself on the Greek island of Kalokairi, running a slowly decaying hotel to support the two of them. Twenty years later, Sophie somehow tracks down all three of these men and invites them to her upcoming wedding to Sky, some dude who is like, fine I guess. All three of them show up because they fondly remember Donna, they all find out they could possibly be Sophie’s father, hijinks ensue, and they all decide they don’t care which one of them is her biological dad, they’ll all parent her together. Then Sophie decides she’s not ready to marry Sky because she’s too young, and Donna marries Sam, the guy she fucked that she was still in love with.
You know who I love in the original Mamma Mia!? Meryl Streep. This is not a radical statement, because Meryl is pretty much excellent in everything. She charms her way through the songs, and it’s 100% believable that a woman like her would conduct very memorable affairs – memorable enough that people who barely knew her for more than a few days twenty years prior would want to rekindle the relationship. But you know who isn’t in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again? Meryl Streep. Because Donna’s dead. No, we don’t know how, or why, other than Meryl probably had something else better to do during the time they were making this movie.
5 years later in plot time, Sophie is trying to reopen the hotel on Kalokairi in her dead mom Donna’s memory. Sophie’s story in the present is interspersed with flashbacks of Donna graduating from college, backpacking in Europe, and meeting and fucking all 3 of Sophie’s fathers in like 3 weeks. Donna inherits a dilapidated farmhouse, fixes it up, and gives birth to Sophie. She then raises Sophie for 20 years alone, 4 years together with Sam, and then dies unceremoniously of mysterious circumstances.
Lily James plays Donna in the flashbacks, and I think she does a terrific job as a wild, impulsive, free-spirited woman trying to find her way in the world while acting very intensely with her hands. Donna’s friends Rosie and Tanya are also very charming, and the men they cast as the young versions of Sam, Harry and Bill are pretty dreamy in their own way (my favorite being Harry because he’s the same kind of awkward adorable as Colin Firth). I believe this younger version of the cast had to audition for their roles because they’re all super talented and can sing and dance, which like… let’s be fair, none of the older male cast can. There are plenty of fun numbers in the flashbacks, but it’s kind of like less fun knowing we’re living in the memories of a corpse.
Present day Sophie is busting her ass to throw a reopening party for the rebuilt hotel. Her boyfriend/fiancé Dominic Cooper, who has somehow aged 25 years between the filming of these movies, is in New York for an internship and gets offered a permanent job out there doing… I don’t know what, hotel stuff. Sophie is pretty pissed he’s considering staying out there, and can only swallow her contempt down long enough to greet Donna’s friends, Tanya and Rosie, who are there for the shindig. She spends the rest of the movie walking by employees and asking them to make small, insignificant adjustments while simultaneously asking everyone if Donna would be proud of her. A storm rips through, ruins some of the decorations and prevents people from travelling into the island for the party. Thankfully, her non-step dads group together and recruit a bunch of fishermen to attend the party for free, using their boats as a ferry to the island. Sky comes back long enough to find out that Sophie is pregnant, and suddenly Sophie’s dream of opening Donna’s hotel doesn’t matter anymore because she’s going to have a baby. Amanda Seyfried again gets the privilege of singing in the presence of dead parents as she duets with ghost Donna at her child’s christening. Why am I sad crying at Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again? I don’t want this. Does *anybody* want this? Where is my escapism?
This is not to say the original Mamma Mia! was free of conflict, but it was *cute* conflict. Sophie has too many dads, the hotel is kinda falling apart sometimes, and Christine Baranski has to fight young dudes off of her with a stick. Meryl is still heartbroken over Sam’s betrayal, but literally all of this is resolved with a song and everyone lives happily ever after. This sequel is just sad. Sophie, her fathers, and Donna’s friends are all sad Donna is dead. Sophie is sad that Sky doesn’t want to help her with the hotel. Past Donna is sad her mother was never supportive. Past Donna is sad that Sam lied to her about being engaged. Past Donna is sad she’s raising a baby by herself. Past Rosie and current Rosie are sad that Bill has jerked her around for 25 years. Shit, the new hotel manager Andy Garcia is heartbroken by a tryst he had with Cher in 1960s Mexico, but at least that gave me my favorite moment of the movie. I fucking love Cher and Terry Benedict, I can’t help it.
The biggest question I had leaving this film was why the fuck was Meryl not in this? Apparently, it is well known that Meryl does not reprise roles because she wants to give herself the opportunity to try new things. This is totally fair – Meryl can do whatever the fuck she wants with her career and we’ll all be cheering her on. But why would they move forward with this sequel knowing straight away they’d have to work around Donna’s absence? And if they knew this before writing the script, why do the present-day plot points feel so goddamn awkward?
They try to draw parallels to Donna’s first experience on the island to Sophie’s struggle to reopen the hotel. But other than Sophie’s need to “fulfill Donna’s dream”, there are no stakes here. Past Donna’s farmhouse was literally falling in on itself and a horse almost died as a result. Sophie’s upset that the welcome banners might fly off the beach. Donna is raising a child completely alone in a foreign country. Sophie’s pregnancy has 3 grandfathers, a hotel full of people who like her, and oh right, the actual father of her baby excited about it. She’s got a pretty charmed life, so it feels kind of hollow when they’re trying to make it seem like everything hinges on this hotel reopening. The amount of safety nets Sophie has in place is insane, so I don’t really buy it, and I don’t really care. They spent 10 years writing this conflict, you’d think it’d feel less clunky.
Thankfully everything works out, and Sophie now has a grandmother and a baby to add to her growing number of family members. I understand they wanted to create a movie that dealt with overcoming grief and living your best life, but man, I really didn’t want that kind of melancholy to be set to ABBA, and the emotional whiplash between the past and the present was a lot to take.
But we did get this adorable scene of Hugh Skinner shimmying around Colin Firth, so it’s not all that bad.
Brace yourself, girls, because they’re trying to make a third Mamma Mia!. How many hits did ABBA have? Are there C-Sides they could milk for this? Or maybe they’ll just reshoot “Dancing Queen” for a 3rd time.