Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Review)

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again or ‘The Summer My Mom Got VD.’

First of all, I like musicals. Singing in the Rain, All that Jazz, Gigi, I could go on. That being said, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is not a musical. It’s a movie with a gimmick and you get to watch that gimmick used to the breaking point like an angry toddler smash a square peg through a round hole. It’s not just a bad movie, it’s one that comes dangerously close to tainting not only the legacy of Abba but also the legacy of everyone involved in this movie. As far as I’m concerned, as much as I like Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård, in my eyes they might as well have thrown their credibility off the table and started from scratch.

I don’t even know where to start with Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. For one thing, the whole concept is pretty trash. A girl who doesn’t know who her father is (Amanda Seyfried) tracks down the three potential men and unable to determine which is her actual daddy ends up just “adopting” them all. Moreover, they all just go with it and are happy to do so. I don’t know how things work in Greece, but if a 20 something year old showed up and called me “dad” I’d want a paternity test. Luckily, that little plot hole doesn’t seem to exist in the bizarro world this takes place in. That said, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again doesn’t really focus on that story. Instead, it follows her mother’s summer of hopping from bed to bed until she ends up pregnant. I’m not one to slut-shame, but at the breakneck pace dear old mom goes through these guys, she’s going to probably want to make an appointment with her Gyno to get tested for… Well, everything. This was the early 80’s after all.

That’s just the first issue I stumbled across in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. There are more than a few to go with it, but let’s just stick to the basics as not to ruin the film for those of you who might still be considering seeing it. For one thing, her mother comes to a strange new island and takes up squatting in a farmhouse, which she also destroys during a “fun and goofy dance number.” I didn’t find the idea of a free-spirited vagrant half as endearing as I’m sure it was meant to be. Then there’s the fact that she decides to open up a hotel on an island which doesn’t seem to have any actual tourist on it. In fact, I’m not sure what the island’s economy is based on, because there’s pretty much no one there except for the residents, and they probably aren’t interested in staying at a hotel. To top it off, there’s this odd embracement of the ideas that the best cure for a broken heart is dick. Well, all I have to say to director Ol Parker is that my garbage disposal is looking pretty broken hearted right now and he should do something about that.

I can totally get why Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again tries to stuff 10 pounds of Abba in a 5-pound bag. It’s because it’s impossible to be angry when you’re listening to them, no matter how badly their songs are sung. However, after the songs, that’s another story. But I guess that’s why Ol Parker decided to have as little plot and story as possible in between songs. It gets to a point where I’m pretty sure the film is just him mindlessly scrolling through their discography trying to figure out how to sandwich in another song. When common sense would tell you to listen to the lyrics and figure out how they might fit into the overall story, Parker instead goes “Oh! A song called Fernando! Let’s name Andy Garcia’s character Fernando and we can use it!” The end result is something far from the great musicals we once had and more like something that would be a made for tv movie for The Disney Channel. Then again, I’m probably being a bit mean there… The Disney Channel deserves a lot more credit than that.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a film that exploits every possible little thing it can. I would say that it beats a dead horse, but it’s more like it beats a dead horse to mush. Cher makes an appearance, so of course, she has to have two big musical numbers during her five minutes on screen. Flashbacks to the past? Let’s have the younger versions of the characters do their worst impressions of the older actors. I will admit that there were a few lines that I chuckled at during the film, but more often than not I was laughing at this film rather than laughing with it. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again has an inconsistent vision, poor dance sequences which feel spontaneous and improvised in the worst possible way, and pacing that only serves to quickly move from one song to the next.

By the end of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again I had to laugh though because it was the only thing protecting me from the horrible second-hand shame I had for everyone involved in this atrocity. I was literally embarrassed for the three male leads of the movie, especially because it became very clear by the end that they either couldn’t dance or that no one wanted to take the time to give them choreography to follow. On the one hand, it’s a good thing the members of Abba aren’t dead because they would be rolling over in their graves. On the other, they have to live with watching this film wreck their music.

I might have been a little hard on Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, but that’s because this sort of trend in Hollywood needs to stop. There are so many layers to production and so many different eyes that look at every aspect, that the fact no one stopped and said, “hey… Maybe we should rethink this,” just blows my mind. The fact of the matter is that Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again puts the cart before the horse, once again. Most musicals have a story in which songs are written based on that story. This is a movie that put a playlist on shuffle and tried to make a story around it. They honestly could have done a better job if they used mad libs to write it instead.