Abba Songs Here We Go Again

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

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Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures

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

Jonathan Prime number/Universal Pictures

OK, look. I don't want to waste your time. Information technology'south hot, it'south muggy and the news is an ever-widening gyre of flaming airborne chili-festival Porta Potties. So how almost nosotros forgo a review that seeks to advance any absurd, objective argument on the relative cinematic worth of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the sequel to the 2008 movie adaption of the longest-running jukebox musical in Broadway history? How virtually, in the involvement of efficiency, I just answer the questions I know y'all to take about the film — considering I had them, too — in order of importance?

1. 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 person heterosexuals among you: In Mamma Mia!, Brosnan played Sam, one of three possible fathers of Sophie, Amanda Seyfried's character. And he had this one solo which was ... rough. He sang information technology — bellowed it, really — at the top of his head-voice, merely with a throaty rasp, and in this defiantly odd Southern-drawl-ish accent. Imagine Huckleberry Hound belting out 'Thunder Road' and you begin to approach the mind-angle Lovecraftian horror of it.)

This fourth dimension out, he reprises the same song he so mercilessly pummeled in the first film, but much more gently, more briefly and in a melancholy fundamental, which rather neatly serves to cauterize the wound and keep the infection from spreading to the residue of the film.

And in fairness, permit's only note that the song in question, in both films, is 'Southward.O.Southward.' — literally a cry for help. Come on, they had to know what they were doing, there.

2. The trailer says Meryl'due south grapheme is dead, simply she'southward on the poster. So what gives — only flashbacks from the offset moving-picture show?

Next question.

Expect, why won't y--

I go it, it'due south a perfectly fair thing to ask — but yous don't actually want to know the answer. Y'all recollect you do, but you lot don't. The film works better if yous go into it hovering in a state of Heisenbergian uncertainty, Streep-wise. Next question.

3. Practice I need to re-picket Mamma Mia! before going in?

You mean, to refresh your retentiveness of that pic's massively complex world-edifice, Byzantine inter-character relationships and densely layered mythology? Uh, yes, no. Really no.

In fact, it'due south probably best to get in fresh-ish, because this film plays fast and loose with facts and chronology clearly established in Mamma Mia!, in means that may subtly disconcert the nerdiest amongst yous.

These variances plough out to exist all for the proficient, notwithstanding. You lot may recall how, in the 2008 film, when Streep'southward character Donna first catches a glimpse of the three center-aged men who, years before, may take fathered her girl — Brosnan'due south Sam, Stellan Skarsgård's Bill and Colin Firth'southward 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 heart-anile Firth in a "punk" wig, eyeliner and studded leather neckband, a middle-aged Skarsgård in a "hippie" wig and flowered shirt and a eye-aged Brosnan in a "biker" wig, complete with headband and particularly woeful mustache-situation.

Given that Mamma Mia! Here We Get Over again concerns itself with how those youthful couplings played out, we must force ourselves to briefly entertain the chilling notion of a whole freaking motion-picture show 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 3 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!, just the 3 immature performers possess markedly better voices than their older selves, so call it a internet win.

Another instance: Cher is in this thing, playing the tardily Donna'south mother, and Sophie'southward grandmother. That'southward no underground; information technology'south in the trailer. (As a thought experiment, endeavor to imagine how much money they must take thrown at Cher to portray Donna's mom, given that she is just 3 years older than Streep. Get ahead, effort — yous will find the puny human being brain insufficient to the job.)

What may non be clear is that her screentime clocks in at just over sixteen minutes. Also, co-ordinate to a passage of Streep dialogue in the 2008 film ("Somebody upwards in that location [betoken to the heavens] has got information technology in for me. I bet it's my mother.") Cher'south advent at the film's climax should logically inspire, amidst the other characters, a expert deal more existential dread, if not screaming terror, than it does here.

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

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

4. Mamma Mia! already trotted out 16 of the 19 songs on ABBA Gold , the best-of album that contains their most-love hits. What songs are left to build some other whole movie around?

Ah. That'south the thing.

Balance assured that those three orphaned songs from ABBA Gold go their fourth dimension in the sun, at terminal.

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

Just they're no mere retreads.

Cheers to managing director Ol Parker, every last 1 of the returning songs merits an empirically improved presentation than it garnered in the 2008 pic: Bigger, splashier, more involved, more than joyous, and, where appropriate (and it's usually appropriate, because: ABBA), infused with a go-for-broke, Busby Berkeley sensibility. And when sung by the preternaturally charismatic Lily James equally Young Donna, delivered with a range of emotion, and a technical skill, that kind of, faintly, dazzles.

I of these returning songs, it really should not surprise y'all, is "Dancing Queen." (Making an ABBA musical without "Dancing Queen" would exist like making a Batman evidence without Batman. I mean, sure, yous can practice it — but why?)

The production of "Dancing Queen" that sits like a colorful, heedlessly cheesy jewel in the center of Mamma Mia! Here We Get Over again borrows the base of operations elements of the 2008 film'south mounting of the same song — and transforms them, alchemically, into ABBA gold. It'south ecstatically shot, charmingly choreographed and sunnily performed. Hear my prediction: One time this film makes its way onto streaming services, clips of this number will alive 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 exist a skillful time to recall that the original Broadway production of Mamma Mia! opened in New York City on October 11, 2001 — timing that may at to the lowest degree partially explicate why it found such a hungrily eager reception. I am here to tell you: The sight of attractive people singing and dancing to the music of ABBA retains its sheer say-so, these many years later, as pop-civilization serotonin.)

So, yes: Those iii overdue songs from ABBA Gold? And those six songs from Mamma Mia! newly mounted and reinterpreted? They're not the trouble.

It's the others. Half of the songs in the movie are comparatively little-known, C-listing ABBA B-sides — with the agreement that the word "comparatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase, given that what we're comparing them to are songs that take infiltrated the very material of modern culture through radio, elevators and dentist offices.

Even if you vest to the subset of the population who knows all the words to "When I Kissed The Instructor," "Angel Eyes," or real snoozers like "I Wonder (Departure)" and "I've Been Waiting For You," yous have to acknowledge that they lack the uncanny, insinuating ability of ABBA's chart-toppers. Sure, they're exquisitely synthetic, deceptively simple feats of shut-harmony power popular, but when so many numbers lack the cultural inescapability of, say, "Fernando," it leaves extended stretches of the picture show ripe for pee-breaks.

five. Is Christine Baranski an enduring, inviolate gift to the world, the final and irrevocable proof of a benevolent college power that seeks just what is all-time for humanity?

Yes.

half dozen. How come, when information technology came fourth dimension to brand a sequel, they didn't just Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Expressionless this matter, and re-tell the original flick's story from the point of view of those thankless, long-suffering (and hot-looking) members of the hotel staff, whom the main characters kept pointedly ignoring?

First-class question. That would accept been an interesting approach, considering how poorly the first motion 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 practise with the fact that Mamma Mia's whole sudsy, conflict-gratis Who is my Father? storyline simply wasn't compelling enough to return to.

Non 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 whirlwind courtships. But at least in that location's more to chew on than there was in the showtime film, which, when you lot break it down, was really only a particularly tuneful, sun-splashed episode of Maury.

vii. What wine pairs best with this film?

Something cheap and cold and fruit-frontward, definitely. Nothing fifty-fifty remotely complex.

Understand going in: This is the kind of flick for which a not-insignificant portion of your fellow opening weekend audience members volition accept pre-gamed. And goodness knows I'm not advising you to popular the bag out of the cheapest box of wine you can find and smuggle information technology into the theater with you lot.

... But if you do, make it a rosé.

Or expect — even that'south as well snooty. Run across if you can still discover a box that'southward just labelled "Chroma."

viii. Blush. Got it. That reminds me: Just how basic is this film?

Oh, who cares? Actually. Why are you and so eager to go and slap a snide label like "basic" on this affair? Whom are yous trying to impress?

It'southward got (generally) groovy songs, sung by (more often than not) people who tin sing, and a story that evaporates like breath on a windowpane. The scenery's gorgeous, as is the cast, and it's got Cher. Why exercise you need it to exist anything more than than that? Why must information technology be capital-G Good? Why tin can't you just savor, on a sweltering summertime twenty-four hour period, something that's simply capital-F Fun?

(... That said.)

(... No yeah okay it'south super basic. Alkaline. pH14. Cinematic Drano, basically.)

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

If you dash out when, during the climactic party, Seyfried, Baranski and Julie Walters Who Is Not Repeat Not Judi Dench Even Though She's Rocking Dench'due south Hairstyle So Your Temporary Confusion Is PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE launch into the soporific ballad "I've Been Waiting For You," you should be practiced to go.

(That correct at that place? Is some Service Journalism at its finest. News you lot tin can use. You are welcome.)

10.What should I do if the screening I attend isn't filled with women and gay men who are day-drunk on blush wine?

In that highly unlikely consequence, immediately and calmly make your way to the nearest get out, which — remember — may be behind yous.

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

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