Two stories: in a flashback, Donna graduates in Oxford and meets Harry in a Paris hotel. She sleeps with him after hearing he is a virgin. Donna is given a boat ride to the Greek island Kalokairi by Bill, and she sleeps with him, too. On Kalokairi, a storm scares a horse in a barn, and a random stranger on a motorycycle, Sam, helps her calm the horse. Donna sleeps with him, too. Donna decides to stay on the island... In the present, Donna's daughter Sophie mourns her deceased mother and decides to open a hotel on the island in her memory. Sophie invites her three fathers Harry, Bill and Sam, but a storm wreaks havoc on the place. Donna's friends Rosie and Tanya also show up on the island. Sophie's boyfriend Sky also arrives, and she tells him she is pregnant. Sophie gives birth and Donna's ghost congratulates her.
In the style of Coppola's "The Godfather 2", "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" is a double story that is both a prequel (that follows the backstory of a young Donna) and sequel (Donna's daughter Sophie) to the original, displaying both stories in a parallel duet. It's one of those movies that you try to avoid at first, but once you give it a chance you get gripped and realize how fun it is, since its charm, positive energy and uplifting emotions can get contagious. However, after "Mamma Mia!" used so many iconic songs from the ABBA discography, not much more was left for this film. Some of the best ABBA songs are thus missing this time around. After two standout musical sequences that have a great choreography—the graduation sequence involving the song "When I Kissed the Teacher"; the restaurant sequence where Sophie and Harry sing "Waterloo"—the movie kind of resorts to being only solid, routine and on auto-pilot, since no other musical number ever comes close to igniting the viewers on their level. The new director Ol Parker gives a surprisingly good effort that keeps the follow-up story going, though the script needed more jokes—the three fathers from the 1st film (Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth) are a bit underused. A small standout here is Christine Baranski as Tanya, and in one of the funniest moments, when she sees the charismatic Fernando (Andy Garcia) and says to herself: "Be still, my beating vagina!" The visual component is enriched thanks to a gorgeous background of the Croatian island Vis, a stand-in for Kalokairi, whereas Meryl Streep has a dignified cameo at the end. An unusual and different, not always inspired, but still fun and well made continuation to the story.
Grade:++
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