MOVIES
Mamma Mia is just noise for some
It’s been 10 years since Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and friends brought the ABBA jukebox musical smash to screen and so here we are again. Now there are those for whom such a pop-hit vehicle reminder of the eternal power of Sweden’s greatest export (after perhaps Volvo and IKEA) will come as a welcome, joyfully overstuffed escapist reminder of all the good things in life. For me, once was more than enough and so it’s less Mamma Mia! than Oy Vey: are we really going to have to endure this again?
It’s a rhetorical question obviously, because there’s no stopping ABBA founders and chief songwriters Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson as they’ve sifted through what back catalogue is left after the first outing to provide music for this version, which stands on its own as a film outside the universe of the multibillion-dollar grossing musical show.
Fear not ABBA fans — all those toetapping, heart-warming earworms you missed hearing Brosnan butcher in the first film are ready to whet your easy-to-appease aural appetites this time. That’s not to say that even a Grinch such as myself can’t admit — under torture — that there might be at least two decent ABBA songs in existence. Problem is neither of them are in either of the films and so I have no skin in this game.
ABBA FOR ALL OCCASIONS
Director Ol Parker takes up the story of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) several years after all the wedding/finding-her-dad shenanigans of the first film. She’s still with love of-her-life Sky (Dominic Cooper) but he’s stuck in New York while Sophie handles the relaunch of her late mother Donna’s (Meryl Streep) Greek island hotel. Of course she’s invited her three dads —
Sam (Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) and Harry (Colin Firth) — as well as dear departed mom’s besties Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters).
As she prepares, there’s plenty of ABBA for every emotional high and low of the journey and we flash back to see the story of how young Donna (Lily James) arrived on the island, met young Sam (Jeremy Irvine), Bill (Josh Dylan) and Harry (Hugh Skinner) and got pregnant with Sophie.
It turns out that Benny and Bjorn don’t like enough of the songs that weren’t included in the first film to let this one get away without some repetition, most noticeably in a pretty straight and frankly lazy redo of a massive all-inclusive romp through the village to the accompaniment of wedding/ matric dance/ batmizvah/ anniversary/ banger Dancing Queen.
If you’re wondering how the hell the writers are going to squeeze Fernando and those drums in, fear not, as thanks to Andy Garcia and a much pre-publicised cameo by Cher, it’s all taken care of — if not gracefully, then at least with the right level of cheesy laziness one expects of such an enterprise.
Brosnan thankfully sings less this time round, and at 72, while she may not move as easily as she once did, Cher does a reasonable Ab Fab turn as grandmother Ruby Sheridan. If that’s small comfort, don’t worry — there’s always space for
Meryl Streep to be raised from the dead when needed.
ABBA sold over 300 million records from their decade-long career as the epitome of everything wrong about the ’70s and so any jukebox, reasonably executed musical excuse to give Australians (the group’s acknowledged crazy lovers) and other fans what they still can’t get enough of is guaranteed to find enough of an audience to make some serious box-office cash.
As a piece of musical film it pretty much delivers more of the same with an expected star-studded cast and colourful numbers set on a breathtaking island in the Aegean. If you’re already a fan of the first film and of course, the unfortunately “timeless” music of Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid, then you’ll be as happy as a Swedish porker in a vegetarian farmer’s backyard.
If not, may I suggest you rather spend an afternoon assembling an IKEA cabinet to the soothing sounds of another Scandinavian, Jean Sibelius — who doesn’t require you to sew frills onto your jeggings and misremember the good times you know weren’t that great in the first place.
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is on circuit