Watching Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is like attending an after-party of a concert — what’s the point, you think, it certainly won’t match up to the exhilaration of what you witnessed earlier. Yet, as you walk in, still tiredly humming tunes from the evening and meet familiar faces from the concert, you slowly realise that collectively reliving the good times wasn’t all that bad a decision, more so, if it yields some new memories, as ephemeral as they may be.
- Director: Ol Parker
- Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Dominic Cooper, Andy García, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Cher, Meryl Streep
- Story line: A flashback into Donna Sheridan’s youth as her daughter Sophie inaugurates her inn
Directed by Ol Parker, Here We Go Again, is equal parts a sequel and prequel, where the ghost of the 2008 film — more specifically the spirit of Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep) — lurks in the corner of every frame. The film takes off a year after Donna’s death and simultaneously ushers us back into her days of youth (played by Lily James), showing us how she transitioned from a carefree, curious Oxford-graduate to an independent, confident woman who is still bohemian at heart. Whether it is the vacuum created in the lives of her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried); her three lovers, Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) and Harry (Colin Firth); her friends and musical brigade, Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski); or the summer romance(s) that got her pregnant, it is all centred around Streep as we remember her — one who jumped off a pier as she sang ‘Dancing Queen’. The film recognises and bemoans her absence, but is unable to successfully fill her shoes.
That’s not to say that James isn’t affecting as the young Donna. It’s undeniably a daunting task to play a character who appears perpetually high on sugar and whose mannerisms have been concretised by Streep. The young troupe in the film, including James, is vivacious but the charm of Mamma Mia! — which sailed high on Abba nostalgia — were the older characters who lived lives of regrets, unrequited love and unfulfilled desires but dreamt of starting all over again. The throwback felt organic with Abba tracks like ‘Our Last Summer’, ‘When All is Said and Done’, ‘SOS’ and ‘The Winner Takes It All’. But in the sequel, which is a lot more romcom-y and dramatic, the songs are fun and frothy but not as penetrative and heartwarming. The exuberance of youth comes nowhere close to the silliness of old age.
Mamma Mia! was by no means a great piece of cinema. It was as blotchy and montage-like as its sequel. That’s why you question the existence of this wildly unnecessary sequel even more. But as you sit through this innocuous motion picture of clear blue skies and beautiful people, you realise that the best is saved for last. Cher enters as the diva grandma, bringing along her dusky voice and white bell-bottoms. And as for Streep’s cameo, in a matter of minutes, she moves the auditorium to tears by singing ‘My Love, My Life’, making you go, “My my, just how much I've missed you?”.