Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

Film: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Lily James, Dominic Cooper, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Andy Garcia, Cher, Meryl Streep
Director: Ol Parker
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I have seen the musical Mamma Mia! both onstage and in theaters, but for me the songs of ABBA will always be something from my childhood, not something I learned about as an adult.  While I was nowhere near old enough to have ABBA be something on the "new hits" radio when I was younger, I stole my mom's ABBA Gold CD (along with Carole King's Tapestry & The Bodyguard...coming out feels so unnecessary in hindsight) and played it over-and-over again, secretly wishing for "Man After Midnight" and strutting to the "Dancing Queen."  The appeal of ABBA is their inexplicably fresh, infectious pop melodies-it's impossible to hear one of their songs that you know and not sing along as a result.  This is also the appeal of the Mamma Mia! franchise, now expanding into a fun, though oddly melancholy sequel-it makes the audience's nostalgia and inability to not sing along a character onto itself.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film take places a couple of years after the previous film, with Sophie (Seyfried) trying to make her mother's hotel dream come to life a year after Donna (Streep) has passed away.  Her relationship with her boyfriend Sky (Cooper) is strained as he is consistently away on business (and the audience is upset that he isn't jet-skiing in red board shorts again), and that two of her three fathers, Harry (Firth) and Bill (Skarsgard) aren't going to be able to make it for the grand opening.  We also learn that Sophie is pregnant (though in this case she knows Sky is the father), and we see flashbacks to her mother's arrival on this Greek island, and her interactions with younger versions of the three fathers.  This back-and-forth actually works quite well, with Lily James stepping into the role of a younger Donna with a great fizz.  The film ends with Donna's grandmother (Cher) coming out of the woodwork in time to sing "Super Trouper" and "Fernando" to a very game Andy Garcia (between this and Book Club, this is the summer of Andy Garcia romancing older women, and I am here for it).

The movie lives or dies off of the two things: the songs and the hot guys.  Really, Mamma Mia knows that its audience is women and gay men, and it doesn't disappoint either group.  The songs are fluffy and fun, and while there aren't any standout numbers (other than the gaudy loveliness of "Fernando"...I was at a morning matinee and I still heard applause from my fellow moviegoers when Cher started singing), you'd have to be deaf with a heart-of-stone not to be humming one of the songs when you left the theater.  The latter aspect we get in the forms of the three young fathers: Hugh Skinner (young Harry), Jeremy Irvine (Young Sam), and Josh Dylan (Young Bill).  Dylan, in particular, with his mop of blond hair and Elvis-like swinging thin hips, literally made me blush when he started moonwalking on a boat it was so, umm, arousing.  They could have just used the tagline "Come for the Hot Guys...Stay for the Cher" and made just as much as money.

The film's decision to go in a darker direction than its predecessor, with Donna dead for most of the film, feels a bit off at first, but as the film progresses it kind of works.  It's a testament to the confidence of Lily James' work, the appeal of the younger "dads" and the tunes of ABBA that you don't really miss Meryl Streep until she shows up and reminds you that she's a true movie star for a reason, giving a wrenching performance of "My Love, My Life."  Streep, more prone to cameos in recent years than she used to be (The Horseman, Suffragette, Mamma Mia 2, and probably Mary Poppins Returns this winter), knows how to effectively land her character in a few short breaths, and rocks out over the credits with Cher.  If they make another movie (and honestly why not at this point?), they don't need to even have the callback to her when they inevitably push Shirley MacLaine as Sophie's great-grandmother, but Meryl makes the most of her big number (as expected).