Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

My my, how can you resist it? Dir: Ol Parker 1hr 54mins ( 12A)

The “plotless melange” of the first Mamma Mia! musical had me breaking out in “a combination of hives and bubonic plague”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Yet something in the “relentless silliness” of this sequel won me over. The fantastically flimsy storyline – enlivened by rousing renditions of songs by Abba – has the original cast, including Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Julie Walters, returning to the idyllic Greek island of Kalokairi to help Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) relaunch her late mother Donna’s guest house. Meryl Streep, whose relaxed charisma as Donna was central to the earlier film’s charm, appears only briefly, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator; and though Lily James, who plays young Donna in a series of flashbacks, is lively, she lacks Streep’s heft. Nevertheless, this movie pulls out all the stops “to send its audience home happy”, said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. There are some terrific one-liners, a fabulous cameo from Cher as Sophie’s diva-ish grandmother and a go-for-broke finale performance of Super Trouper by the entire cast. Strange to say, the result is simultaneously “atrocious” and “wonderful”.

Abba’s devotion to effervescent pop is easy to dismiss, said The Economist, but their universal themes and catchy tunes are a source of joy in anxious times. The “astonishing” success of the first film, released in July 2008, owed much to the fact that the world was lurching towards financial crisis; this one should capitalise on audiences’ desire to escape from talk of Donald Trump and Brexit. I was so captivated by the original movie that I’ve seen it 25 times, said Jenni Murray in The Times; its focus on the bond between mother and daughter makes it appealing to women of every age. But with the “glorious” Streep all but absent, “a terrible pall of sadness” hangs over the sequel. And while some of the great tunes are reused, the film is dotted with “frankly less powerful samples of the Abba songbook”. Actually, the fact that most of the songs are unfamiliar is an advantage, said Ani Bundel on Nbcnews.com: it makes this feel like an “almost original” work. The first film was sometimes too faithful to the stage version, and the actors were chosen for name recognition rather than their ability to sing. This time none of the cast seem embarrassed to be in a silly, fluffy musical. James throws herself into every number with abandon, “giving Donna a genuinely carefree spirit that Streep only flirted with”; Hugh Skinner, playing Firth’s character as a young man with gusto, somehow manages to pull off a “fantastically ridiculous” version of Waterloo while never forgetting to “exude Firthiness”. It’s positively delightful.