Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on April 18, 2025
Mamma Mia Here We Go Again begins in bold fashion: by killing off its main character.
In the opening scene, we learn Donna (Meryl Streep) has died, leaving daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) and her three fathers to grieve. Although the movie made nearly $400M at the box office, many audiences found this jarring. They expected a Meryl Streep movie. Some never forgave the film.
Their loss: this frothy, ridiculous jukebox musical of ABBA songs is a glorious slice of cinema. Armed with hilariously on-the-nose pop songs sung and danced with earnest maximalism, Here We Go Again is sugary-sweet eye- and ear-candy padding two low-stakes stories…until it pops in a mouthguard, punches you in the heart, and slurps up your tears with a crazy straw.
Daughter Sophie (Seyfried) wants to fulfill her mother’s dream by opening a cozy island hotel, but she and her partner Sky (Dominic Cooper) are struggling. While working to launch the resort, Sophie imagines her mother’s fateful summer when a trio of steamy flings led to her conception.
This premise is…slight. The first Mamma Mia exists, so we know the trajectory of all those earlier romances, and a hotel opening in gorgeous Croatia-pretending-to-be-Greece offers sumptuous scenery but humble drama. There’s never a moment when you doubt all will work out for everyone involved; even when ABBA’s music dips into legato, it explodes into a peppy number four measures later. It’s a jukebox musical! There’s a ceiling on the intensity when stitched-together Swedish pop blankets the film.
But Here We Go Again has two aces hiding up its sleeve that make it magical. The first is Lily James, playing the young Donna while she canoodles through Europe. James glows in every scene, physically and musically; she’s doing an impression of Streep’s character (who wasn’t exactly deep herself), but she plays the role with radiant cheer and unblinking conviction. You end the movie in love with James and wholly convinced she’s destined for stardom.
The second thing the movie has is intense, huge-hearted emotion. Underneath all the costumes and choreography, Mamma Mia 2 is about motherhood, and it lands its reverence for moms with devastating precision. In the second half, when Sophie’s life changes dramatically, her and her late mom’s stories pull up in parallel. It’s then that Streep appears, ushering in the waterworks. I saw this in theaters with my mom, and though each of us had seen it already, that viewing together meant so much more. This is a movie I think about on Mother’s Day.
Even if the emotion doesn’t get you or you’re some mom-hating curmudgeon who finds Bambi hilarious, everyone’s having so much fun on screen I dare you not to tap your foot. I’m not a huge fan of ABBA’s music, but I know this soundtrack by heart and may have even dabbled in a dance number inspired by it. The movie offers less nuance than birthday cake, but I love birthday cake.
And I love this movie.
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