BEFORE: I watched the first "Mamma Mia!" film just over a year ago, and of course as soon as I did that, I realized the sequel would be released within a few months. But the die was already cast, so I scheduled the follow-up as soon as possible. I was going to watch it on an Academy screener, but HBO just started running it a week or two ago, so great timing there. Now there's no need for me to lug the screener home from work. But here's an upside - most people had to wait 10 years for a sequel, but since I watched the first film very late, I only had to wait about 14 months.
Julie Walters carries over from "Mary Poppins Returns" - and so do two other actors, so there are THREE links to yesterday's film - and Walters will be here tomorrow as well, so let's focus on her. Maybe this film rightfully belongs in February, because it's probably all about love and romance, but the linking says to watch it today.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Mamma Mia!" (Movie #2,860)
THE PLOT: Five years after the events of "Mamma Mia!", Sophie prepares for the grand re-opening of the Hotel Bella Donna as she learns more about her mother's past.
AFTER: I've ranted before in this space, many times, about the method of telling a story that involves jumping around scattershot in time, when that's not the way we all live our lives. But that's the trend, using non-linear film techniques to gain more insight into the linear lives of the characters, to draw connections between THAT event in the past and THIS event in the present - and the trend's not going anywhere. If anything, it's becoming more and more prevalent and accepted as a valid technique. The "Mamma Mia" sequel keeps jumping back and forth between Young Donna's life in the past and her daughter Sophie's life in the present - to the point of being TOTALLY ANNOYING about it, like it's perfectly normal for one character to walk into a room and then be replaced by another character two decades later doing the exact same thing. And then this forces the audience to piece together two stories from two timelines at the same time, and falsely gives the impression that time is fluid, or a giant flat circle or something to that effect.
I managed to book-end "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" with the last two episodes of "True Detective" season 3, which constantly toggled between THREE timelines - a crime and initial investigation in 1980, a re-opening of the case due to new evidence in 1990, and a present-day set of interviews that force yet another examination of the case decades later. So that's right, I spent FOUR HOURS tonight toggling between non-concurrent timelines, so that's some form of temporal whiplash I endured, or else I'm THIS close to gaining mastery over all time and space, it's a little hard to tell the difference. Enough already, I surrender, it's time for us all to start living outside of the constructs of linear time and start thinking five-dimensionally like Mr. Mxyzptlk. (Some fans of this franchise have compared the sequel to "The Godfather Part II", but I'm not so sure...)
So that's what "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" has in common with "True Detective" - but it also has something in common with franchises like "Star Wars" and "Alien" in that they've all chosen to create sequels that are also prequels, or perhaps the other way around. Half of this film is set five years after the first film, but the other half is set 20 years or so before - and that means that as the past story progresses, it's going to (ideally) explain the events leading up to the prior film, and much like "Alien: Covenant" or "Rogue One", we all know (or think we know) how that has to end, so it's going to be a story that inches us closer to where we all entered the story in the first place.
So the question then becomes, if this information about the past is really that important, why haven't we seen it before? (If it's THAT important that Dumbledore and Grindelwald were lovers, why wasn't it important enough to mention in the damn film?) From watching "Mamma Mia", we know that there was much confusion over who Sophie's father was - so obviously there was a time period in the past where Donna had multiple lovers in a short time-span, since she couldn't say for sure who was the biological contributor of 1/2 of her DNA. And then, for some reason, nobody was willing or able or interested in taking a genetic test to determine her parentage (because that would be crazy, right?) and instead Sophie took delight in having "three fathers" and each man seemed willing to settle for 1/3 of a daughter. I guess 1/3 of a daughter is better than none?
And so "Here We Go Again" sets out to (without settling the matter this time either, so don't get your hopes up) depict in great detail that confusing two-week period in Young Donna's life where she slept with three different men. But she's not "easy", OK? Very important to get that straight. Look, it was a different time, it was the 80s, OK? (Or was it the free-love 1960's? That would have made more sense...) Women were empowered in the 80's, they didn't have to define themselves through men, they could sleep with whoever as a matter of feminist pride and they didn't need to get married to have a child either. So what if the pendulum has since swung back the other way and conservatives want to call all single mothers evil again - there will be no slut-shaming of young Meryl Streep's character's stand-in, even if the story has to bend itself over backwards and sideways and diagonally in order to bring about such a crazy round of confusing circumstances.
SO now the bad news - Meryl Streep is NOT in about 95% of this movie. No spoilers here but there is a very valid reason why her character, Donna, is not the one opening the hotel that she struggled to build and clean and decorate for 20-plus years, and that task now falls to her daughter Sophie and the one of the three baby-fathers who she ended up with. Yes, after deciding to open up a hotel on a remote Greek island that nobody visits (umm, see the problem?) her daughter came back to the island and ended up making it happen, with a big staff and a giant grand opening party. Chances are the hotel will be a big hit for about a year, before everyone decides not to go there any more, because it's way too crowded.
Unfortunately they make use here of some very 2nd-tier ABBA songs, probably because they used up most of the good ones in the first film. The tie-in to Donna's graduation with "I Kissed the Teacher" seems very inappropriate, especially in light of the #metoo movements, because teachers are supposed to avoid these situations now - Donna could have really gotten her teacher in trouble. But is this supposed to be considered OK just because the teacher shown was female? This led to a lot of confusion, not just in the lyrics but because Donna had never shown an interest in kissing women before. Then to celebrate their graduation, or perhaps sexual awakening everybody left the ceremony and got on a bicycle for some reason. Perhaps a bunch of bisexual bicyclists?
Songs like "Waterloo" also seemed very forced, that doesn't seem like a song that two potential lovers who have recently met would sing to each other. Why, because there's a statue of Napoleon in the café? That seems like a stretch. Was this because Harry was a virgin, and women were somehow his downfall? Even this is pushing the bounds of credulity, especially given his eventual orientation, so really it feels like they just had to shoehorn "Waterloo" in somehow, because it's one of ABBA's biggest hits. Cher appears near the end for the thinnest of reasons, is she supposed to make up for the lack of Meryl Streep, or what? They also throw in another cameo at the last minute, that guy who plays "The Most Interesting Man in the World" in those famous beer commercials. How random.
There are a lot of comings and goings, someone is always missing a ferry here or wheedling a boat ride to the island out of someone there. And any moment from the first film that was somewhat memorable, like the Dynamos arriving on the island, gets repeated at least twice here, once in the past and once in the present. Because it worked once, so here we go again... And then finally everyone defies the laws of time and space and sings a big group number with their past or future selves. Try to explain that one, I dare you.
Also starring Meryl Streep (also carrying over from "Mary Poppins Returns"), Colin Firth (ditto), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "While We're Young"), Lily James (last seen in "Burnt"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Pierce Brosnan (ditto), Stellan Skarsgard (ditto), Dominic Cooper (ditto), Cher (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Kill the Messenger"), Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Jeremy Irvine (last seen in "War Horse"), Hugh Skinner, Josh Dylan (last seen in "Allied"), Omid Djalili (last heard in "Shaun the Sheep Movie"), Celia Imrie (last seen in "Lucky Break"), Maria Vacratsis, Panos Mouzourakis, Gerard Monaco, Anna Antoniades, Jonathan Goldsmith, Brooke Bell, with cameos from Benny Andersson (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Bjorn Ulvaeus (ditto).
RATING: 5 out of 10 fishing boats
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