By and large a glossy dud

Pretty much everyone seemed to enjoy the allsinging, all-dancing Abba-inspired hit Mamma Mia! in 2008. The followup is by and large a glossy dud.

The setting is the same hotel on a sun-drenched Greek island. The charismatic mom and owner Donna, played by Meryl Streep, has died. Her young daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), the brideto-be in part one, has taken over. She’s pregnant, the hotel’s been refurbished, but she’s still struggling to connect the dots with respect to her paternity. So she invites to the reopening of the hotel the three men (Pierce Brosnan-colin Firth-stellan Skarsgard) her mother dated back in 1979.

Incoming British writer-director Ol Parker has failed to recreate the infectious charm of Phyllida Lloyd’s original. The plot see-saws between past and present, which becomes tiresome after a while. The staging of tunes such as ‘When I kissed the teacher’ and ‘Waterloo’ in the first half feels clumsy. Thankfully, we still have Donna played in flashbacks by Streep, and as a young woman by the luminous Lily James. And the climactic reunion features a raft of pop favourites, from ‘Fernando’ to ‘Super Trouper’, both of these rendered by the ever-effervescent Cher.

Streep appears in a cameo to belt out the heartbreaking duet ‘My love, my life’ with Seyfried. Lily Ja- mes’s warbling of ‘Andante, andante’ is a showstopper. Ch- ristine Baranski and Julie Walters are the ensemble highlig- hts, as Donna’s lifelong friends.

The film’s confused and ditzy. But the formula will likely be irresistible to many.