Three of my Gathering Girls pals and I went out to lunch and then to
go see Mamma Mia! Here we go Again. I’ve never been to a more confusing movie in
my life and I wasn’t alone in that opinion. The two of us who hadn’t seen the
original Mamma Mia got totally lost
trying to follow the flashbacks. If you see it, here’s what you need to know: the 2018 Mamma Mia is both a
prequel and a sequel to the original film and the four main characters were
played by eight actors---and the audience needs to believe that the younger
versions (in their early-twenties) some 25-ish years later could
have morphed into people who were played by actors ages 58 to 69. Do the
math. It doesn’t work. Other quirky casting head-scratchers were Cher at 72
playing Sophie’s grandmother while Meryle Streep at 69 played Sophie’s mother.
I’m sorry but no amount of camera filters makes that math add up. And did I mention
Meryle appears as a ghost to sing duos with her daughter? Even the hotel
morphed from run-down to restored and back and forth a few times using weird camera tricks that had me wishing I had a drink in my hand to explain
the weirdness they triggered in my brain.
I’m always fascinated with how IMDb capsulizes a film’s storyline
down to one sentence and this case they wrote: “Five years after the events of Mamma Mia! (2008), Sophie learns about
her mother's past while pregnant herself.” Yup, half the movie was spent showing
how the mother (younger Donna/older Meryle) was a slut having had three affairs with
strangers during her fertile days resulting in a pregnancy. The three guys, lo
and behold, somehow became best friends by film number two and they all considered themselves to
be co-fathers to Sophie. (Like getting a DNA test never occurred to any of
them? Was that explained in movie number one? I just don't know!)
I do know that
both Mamma Mias are musicals based on
a lot of ABBA songs and, of course, there were bell-bottoms and
colorful costumes galore and masses of people dancing everywhere including on the boats that brought people to the Greek Island hotel where most of the movie's action took place. At rogerebert.com the review said the older fathers---Colin Firth,
Stellan Skarsgard and Pierce Brosnan---looked like they were “forced into singing
ABBA songs that clearly make them miserable.” I, on the other hand, thought
they looked like they were having great fun clowning around in a senior hall musical.
I like to watch movie trailers before seeing a film and to read reviews afterward (before writing my own) and I ran across an on-camera review from The
Onion, a web satiric site. It made me laugh and I saw myself in what Peter K.
Ronsenthat said because I really had no interest in seeing this movie. I went
because the others were lusting to see Cher, Meryle and the ever popular-with-senior-women Andy
Garcia. I did not know the actress, Lily James who played the younger Donna
but she’s a great singer and she was in Cinderella,
Downton Abby and War and Peace. I
also didn’t know the other talented young woman who played Sophie, Amanda
Seyfried. She was in the original Mamma Mia and also in Les Miserble. But for the entire movie I thought flashback younger Donna and Sophie were
played by the same actress. It was only after consulting Professor Google that I could be talked out of that delusion. Like I said, I’ve never been to a more confusing movie. Still,
it was fun to hear the old ABBA music and to know that people approaching or in their
septuagenarian years can still pull off acting gigs that required them to climb hundreds of step to a mountain top chapel.
The New York Times scathing review was probably one of those
The Onion reviewer had in mind when he said something like, “Did you really expect Schindler’s fucking List? It’s July, not Oscar
season.” For myself, I was glad we went on cheap Tuesday because I had enough
fun to warrant paying the discounted rate but not enough to feel good if I had
forked over another five bucks. It was a silly movie---and I generally like 'silly'---although I could have done without the fast moving colors that occasionally gave me what felt like psychedelic color induced brain blinks. But I did find myself wishing I could
have jotted down a few lines of dialogue like when a woman was
introduced to Andy Garcia she said, “Have him washed and brought to my tent.” An old joke but it
made me laugh and another line I liked was said by younger Donna: “Life is short,
the world is wide and I want to make some memories.” Good memories is what my gal pals and I made that afternoon and since half the fun of going to
the movies is comparing notes afterward we also stopped for ice cream before going home.
©
Note the photo at the top: Those are the two girls I thought were played by the same actress. I still can't tell them apart. They even sounded the same.
Note the photo at the top: Those are the two girls I thought were played by the same actress. I still can't tell them apart. They even sounded the same.
