Is the Music From Mammia Mia Here We Go Again Abba

Electric Waterloo: (L to R) Young Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn), Young Donna (Lily James) and Young Rosie (Alexa Davies) feel the crush from the tambourine, oh yeah, in Mamma Mia! Here Nosotros Go Again. Jonathan Prime number/Universal Pictures hide caption

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Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures

Electric Waterloo: (L to R) Immature Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn), Young Donna (Lily James) and Young Rosie (Alexa Davies) experience the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah, in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Once again.

Jonathan Prime number/Universal Pictures

OK, look. I don't want to waste matter your time. It'southward hot, information technology's muggy and the news is an e'er-widening scroll of flaming airborne chili-festival Porta Potties. So how virtually we forgo a review that seeks to advance any cool, objective argument on the relative cinematic worth of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the sequel to the 2008 film adaption of the longest-running jukebox musical in Broadway history? How about, in the interest of efficiency, I just answer the questions I know you to have about the film — considering I had them, too — in order of importance?

ane. Does Pierce Brosnan sing in this? Tell me Pierce Brosnan doesn't sing in this.

He ... does.

Only. But! They've learned from history.

(For the male heterosexuals among yous: In Mamma Mia!, Brosnan played Sam, one of three possible fathers of Sophie, Amanda Seyfried'southward character. And he had this one solo which was ... crude. He sang it — bellowed it, really — at the top of his head-voice, only with a throaty rasp, and in this defiantly odd Southern-drawl-ish accent. Imagine Huckleberry Hound belting out 'Thunder Road' and you lot begin to approach the listen-bending Lovecraftian horror of it.)

This time out, he reprises the same song he so mercilessly pummeled in the start film, but much more than gently, more briefly and in a melancholy key, which rather neatly serves to cauterize the wound and go along the infection from spreading to the residual of the picture show.

And in fairness, allow'south merely note that the song in question, in both films, is 'S.O.Due south.' — literally a cry for aid. Come on, they had to know what they were doing, there.

two. The trailer says Meryl's character is dead, simply she's on the poster. So what gives — just flashbacks from the first film?

Next question.

Wait, why won't y--

I get information technology, information technology's a perfectly fair matter to ask — just you don't actually desire to know the respond. You think you do, merely you don't. The motion-picture show works meliorate if you lot become into it hovering in a country of Heisenbergian uncertainty, Streep-wise. Next question.

iii. Do I need to re-scout Mamma Mia! earlier going in?

You mean, to refresh your retentivity of that picture show'due south massively complex globe-building, Byzantine inter-grapheme relationships and densely layered mythology? Uh, aye, no. Really no.

In fact, information technology'southward probably best to go in fresh-ish, because this film plays fast and loose with facts and chronology clearly established in Mamma Mia!, in ways that may subtly disconcert the nerdiest amidst you.

These variances turn out to exist all for the adept, even so. You may retrieve how, in the 2008 flick, when Streep's grapheme Donna outset catches a glimpse of the iii eye-anile men who, years before, may take fathered her daughter — Brosnan'due south Sam, Stellan Skarsgård's Pecker and Colin Firth'due south Harry — she briefly imagines them as they were in their youth. Which is to say, given the blessed cheesiness of the whole cinematic endeavor: a middle-anile Firth in a "punk" wig, eyeliner and studded leather collar, a middle-aged Skarsgård in a "hippie" wig and flowered shirt and a heart-aged Brosnan in a "biker" wig, complete with headband and particularly woeful mustache-situation.

Given that Mamma Mia! Here We Get Again concerns itself with how those youthful couplings played out, we must force ourselves to briefly entertain the chilling notion of a whole freaking movie with Brosnan, Skarsgård and Firth assaying versions of their younger selves — and then, thankfully, dispel it into the ether of What-Might-Have-Been. Consider it a mercy that the filmmakers instead shunted the entire janky-wig budget into hiring iii wan twinks to play Young Sam (Jeremy Irvine), Immature Bill (Josh Dylan) and Young Harry (Hugh Skinner), respectively. Yes, several details of how Donna met these men differ markedly from the history nosotros got in Mamma Mia!, but the three young performers possess markedly better voices than their older selves, and then call it a net win.

Another example: Cher is in this affair, playing the late Donna's female parent, and Sophie's grandmother. That'south no secret; it's in the trailer. (Every bit a idea experiment, try to imagine how much coin they must have thrown at Cher to portray Donna's mom, given that she is just iii years older than Streep. Go ahead, effort — y'all will find the puny human brain insufficient to the task.)

What may not be articulate is that her screentime clocks in at merely over sixteen minutes. Besides, co-ordinate to a passage of Streep dialogue in the 2008 film ("Somebody upwards there [signal to the heavens] has got it in for me. I bet information technology's my mother.") Cher's appearance at the picture'due south climax should logically inspire, amidst the other characters, a good deal more existential dread, if not screaming terror, than it does hither.

Look, it's no secret that Cher is a supernatural force. But if nosotros accept that line of dialogue equally Mamma Mia! canon, she may in truth be a Vampyr. The script is not forthcoming, but what other conclusion is possible?

She does get a number to do, though, and it'due south really pretty great. So, you know: undead, schmundead — at the end of the mean solar day information technology's Cher singing in a exquisitely tailored pantsuit, then it'southward a win.

four. Mamma Mia! already trotted out 16 of the 19 songs on ABBA Gold , the all-time-of album that contains their nigh-beloved hits. What songs are left to build some other whole motion-picture show around?

Ah. That's the thing.

Rest bodacious that those three orphaned songs from ABBA Gilded get their time in the sunday, at last.

Also know that of the 18 songs on the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again soundtrack, 6 — fully i-third — are repeats from the commencement pic.

But they're no mere retreads.

Thanks to director Ol Parker, every last one of the returning songs claim an empirically improved presentation than information technology garnered in the 2008 film: Bigger, splashier, more involved, more than joyous, and, where appropriate (and information technology's usually appropriate, because: ABBA), infused with a become-for-broke, Busby Berkeley sensibility. And when sung by the preternaturally charismatic Lily James as Immature Donna, delivered with a range of emotion, and a technical skill, that kind of, faintly, dazzles.

One of these returning songs, it actually should non surprise you, is "Dancing Queen." (Making an ABBA musical without "Dancing Queen" would be like making a Batman show without Batman. I mean, sure, you lot can do it — just why?)

The production of "Dancing Queen" that sits similar a colorful, heedlessly cheesy precious stone in the center of Mamma Mia! Hither We Get Again borrows the base elements of the 2008 film's mounting of the same song — and transforms them, alchemically, into ABBA gold. It's ecstatically shot, charmingly choreographed and sunnily performed. Hear my prediction: Once this moving picture makes its mode onto streaming services, clips of this number will live in hundreds of thousands of browser windows, waiting to be tabbed over to, and clicked upon, as undecayed, desperately needed mid-afternoon mood-lifters.

(Here might be a practiced time to think that the original Broadway production of Mamma Mia! opened in New York City on Oct 11, 2001 — timing that may at least partially explain why it establish such a hungrily eager reception. I am hither to tell you: The sight of attractive people singing and dancing to the music of ABBA retains its sheer potency, these many years subsequently, as pop-culture serotonin.)

So, yes: Those three overdue songs from ABBA Golden? And those six songs from Mamma Mia! newly mounted and reinterpreted? They're non the trouble.

Information technology's the others. Half of the songs in the motion picture are comparatively little-known, C-list ABBA B-sides — with the understanding that the word "comparatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase, given that what we're comparison them to are songs that have infiltrated the very fabric of mod culture through radio, elevators and dentist offices.

Fifty-fifty if you belong to the subset of the population who knows all the words to "When I Kissed The Teacher," "Angel Eyes," or real snoozers like "I Wonder (Departure)" and "I've Been Waiting For You lot," you have to admit that they lack the uncanny, insinuating ability of ABBA's nautical chart-toppers. Sure, they're exquisitely constructed, deceptively elementary feats of close-harmony power pop, but when so many numbers lack the cultural inescapability of, say, "Fernando," it leaves extended stretches of the picture ripe for pee-breaks.

5. Is Christine Baranski an enduring, inviolate gift to the earth, the terminal and irrevocable proof of a benevolent college power that seeks only what is all-time for humanity?

Aye.

6. How come, when it came time to brand a sequel, they didn't simply Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead this thing, and re-tell the original film's story from the betoken of view of those thankless, long-suffering (and hot-looking) members of the hotel staff, whom the main characters kept pointedly ignoring?

Excellent question. That would accept been an interesting approach, because how poorly the outset picture treated the locals of Kalokairi. (They come off better in the sequel — a few are even allowed to speak, imagine that, and this time out the main characters are pointedly shown expressing appreciation for all the staff does to help.)

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Mamma Mia's whole sudsy, conflict-complimentary Who is my Male parent? storyline merely wasn't compelling enough to return to.

Not that the plot of the sequel is The Brothers Karamazov or anything — basically, Sophie wants to throw a party and complications ensue, while we witness flashbacks of her mother's cyclone courtships. But at to the lowest degree there's more than to chew on than at that place was in the commencement motion-picture show, which, when you pause it downwardly, was really simply a particularly tuneful, lord's day-splashed episode of Maury.

7. What vino pairs best with this movie?

Something cheap and cold and fruit-forward, definitely. Nothing even remotely complex.

Understand going in: This is the kind of movie for which a non-insignificant portion of your fellow opening weekend audition members will have pre-gamed. And goodness knows I'one thousand not advising y'all to popular the handbag out of the cheapest box of wine you can find and smuggle it into the theater with yous.

... Simply if y'all do, brand it a rosé.

Or wait — fifty-fifty that'south also snooty. Meet if yous tin can still discover a box that'southward just labelled "Blush."

8. Blush. Got information technology. That reminds me: Merely how bones is this film?

Oh, who cares? Really. Why are you so eager to get and slap a snide characterization similar "basic" on this thing? Whom are yous trying to print?

It'due south got (more often than not) not bad songs, sung past (mostly) people who tin can sing, and a story that evaporates like breath on a windowpane. The scenery's gorgeous, as is the bandage, and information technology's got Cher. Why do you need information technology to be anything more than that? Why must it be uppercase-Grand Good? Why tin can't y'all just enjoy, on a sweltering summer mean solar day, something that'southward simply capital-F Fun?

(... That said.)

(... No yeah okay it'south super basic. Element of group i. pH14. Cinematic Drano, basically.)

9.When should I pee then I don't miss Cher's big number?

If you dash out when, during the climactic political party, Seyfried, Baranski and Julie Walters Who Is Non Repeat Not Judi Dench Fifty-fifty Though She's Rocking Dench's Hairstyle Then Your Temporary Confusion Is PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE launch into the soporific ballad "I've Been Waiting For You," you lot should be good to go.

(That right in that location? Is some Service Journalism at its finest. News you tin can use. You are welcome.)

x.What should I practice if the screening I attend isn't filled with women and gay men who are twenty-four hour period-drunkard on blush vino?

In that highly unlikely event, immediately and calmly make your fashion to the nearest exit, which — remember — may be behind you.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/627983158/abba-silver-mamma-mia-here-we-go-again