Are All the Songs in Momma Mia Here We Go Again by Abba

Electric Waterloo: (L to R) Young Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn), Young Donna (Lily James) and Immature Rosie (Alexa Davies) experience the crush from the tambourine, oh aye, in Mamma Mia! Hither We Go Once more. Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures hide caption

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Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures

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

Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures

OK, look. I don't desire to waste your fourth dimension. It's hot, it'south muggy and the news is an ever-widening gyre of flaming airborne chili-festival Porta Potties. So how near we forgo a review that seeks to accelerate any absurd, objective argument on the relative cinematic worth of Mamma Mia! Here We Get Once again, the sequel to the 2008 moving-picture show adaption of the longest-running jukebox musical in Broadway history? How nigh, in the involvement of efficiency, I just respond the questions I know y'all to accept almost the picture — because I had them, too — in guild of importance?

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

He ... does.

Simply. BUT! They've learned from history.

(For the male heterosexuals amid you: In Mamma Mia!, Brosnan played Sam, one of three possible fathers of Sophie, Amanda Seyfried's grapheme. And he had this one solo which was ... crude. He sang it — bellowed information technology, 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 begin to arroyo the mind-bending Lovecraftian horror of it.)

This time out, he reprises the aforementioned song he and then mercilessly pummeled in the first flick, only 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 rest of the movie.

And in fairness, let'south just notation that the song in question, in both films, is 'Southward.O.S.' — literally a weep for assist. Come on, they had to know what they were doing, there.

2. The trailer says Meryl'south character is expressionless, merely she's on the poster. So what gives — just flashbacks from the offset film?

Next question.

Look, why won't y--

I get it, it's a perfectly fair thing to ask — simply you don't really desire to know the respond. You retrieve you lot practise, only you don't. The film works better if you go into it hovering in a state of Heisenbergian dubiety, Streep-wise. Next question.

3. Practise I need to re-scout Mamma Mia! earlier going in?

You mean, to refresh your memory of that flick's massively circuitous world-building, Byzantine inter-character relationships and densely layered mythology? Uh, yep, no. Really no.

In fact, it's probably best to become in fresh-ish, because this moving picture plays fast and loose with facts and chronology clearly established in Mamma Mia!, in ways that may subtly disconcert the nerdiest among you lot.

These variances turn out to be all for the good, still. Yous may think how, in the 2008 film, when Streep'due south character Donna kickoff catches a glimpse of the 3 eye-aged men who, years earlier, may take fathered her girl — Brosnan's Sam, Stellan Skarsgård'southward Nib and Colin Firth'south Harry — she briefly imagines them as they were in their youth. Which is to say, given the blessed cheesiness of the whole cinematic attempt: a heart-aged Firth in a "punk" wig, eyeliner and studded leather neckband, a center-aged Skarsgård in a "hippie" wig and flowered shirt and a middle-aged Brosnan in a "biker" wig, complete with headband and especially woeful mustache-situation.

Given that Mamma Mia! Here Nosotros Go Over again concerns itself with how those youthful couplings played out, nosotros must strength 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-Take-Been. Consider it a mercy that the filmmakers instead shunted the entire janky-wig upkeep into hiring iii wan twinks to play Young Sam (Jeremy Irvine), Young Bill (Josh Dylan) and Young Harry (Hugh Skinner), respectively. Yes, several details of how Donna met these men differ markedly from the history we got in Mamma Mia!, but the three young performers possess markedly amend voices than their older selves, then call information technology a net win.

Another example: Cher is in this thing, playing the late Donna's mother, and Sophie's grandmother. That'due south no hugger-mugger; information technology's in the trailer. (As a idea experiment, attempt to imagine how much money they must have thrown at Cher to portray Donna'south mom, given that she is but three years older than Streep. Become ahead, endeavour — you will discover the puny man encephalon bereft to the job.)

What may not exist clear is that her screentime clocks in at just over 16 minutes. Also, according to a passage of Streep dialogue in the 2008 movie ("Somebody upwards there [betoken to the heavens] has got it in for me. I bet information technology's my female parent.") Cher's appearance at the film's climax should logically inspire, amongst the other characters, a good bargain more existential dread, if not screaming terror, than it does here.

Await, information technology's no underground that Cher is a supernatural forcefulness. But if we accept that line of dialogue every bit Mamma Mia! canon, she may in truth be a Vampyr. The script is not forthcoming, merely what other determination is possible?

She does go a number to do, though, and it'due south really pretty not bad. So, you know: undead, schmundead — at the end of the 24-hour interval it'due south Cher singing in a exquisitely tailored pantsuit, so it's a win.

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

Ah. That's the thing.

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

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

Only they're no mere retreads.

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

One of these returning songs, information technology really should not surprise y'all, is "Dancing Queen." (Making an ABBA musical without "Dancing Queen" would be like making a Batman show without Batman. I mean, sure, y'all tin can do it — simply why?)

The production of "Dancing Queen" that sits like a colorful, heedlessly cheesy precious stone in the center of Mamma Mia! Here We Get Once more borrows the base of operations elements of the 2008 moving picture's mounting of the aforementioned song — and transforms them, alchemically, into ABBA gold. Information technology'due south ecstatically shot, charmingly choreographed and sunnily performed. Hear my prediction: Once this film makes its manner onto streaming services, clips of this number volition live in hundreds of thousands of browser windows, waiting to be tabbed over to, and clicked upon, every bit dependable, badly needed mid-afternoon mood-lifters.

(Hither might be a good time to retrieve that the original Broadway product of Mamma Mia! opened in New York City on October 11, 2001 — timing that may at least partially explain why it found 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 later, as pop-culture serotonin.)

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

It's the others. Half of the songs in the pic 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 comparing them to are songs that take infiltrated the very material of modern civilization through radio, elevators and dentist offices.

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

5. Is Christine Baranski an indelible, inviolate gift to the world, the final and irrevocable proof of a benevolent college power that seeks simply what is best for humanity?

Yeah.

6. How come up, when information technology came time to brand a sequel, they didn't but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead this thing, and re-tell the original film's story from the indicate 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 have been an interesting approach, considering how poorly the first film treated the locals of Kalokairi. (They come up off ameliorate 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-free Who is my Male parent? storyline just 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. Simply at least there'south more to chew on than there was in the first film, which, when you break information technology down, was really simply a particularly tuneful, sun-splashed episode of Maury.

7. What wine pairs best with this moving-picture show?

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

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

... But if you do, get in a rosé.

Or look — even that's too snooty. See if y'all can nonetheless observe a box that'south just labelled "Blush."

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

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

Information technology's got (mostly) great 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 cast, and it's got Cher. Why do y'all demand it to be anything more than that? Why must it be majuscule-G Good? Why can't you just savour, on a sweltering summer day, something that'south simply capital letter-F Fun?

(... That said.)

(... No aye okay it's super bones. 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'southward Rocking Dench's Hairstyle So Your Temporary Confusion Is PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE launch into the soporific ballad "I've Been Waiting For You," y'all should be proficient to go.

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

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

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

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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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