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Highly Promiscuous Sequel like a lacrosse player perpetually banging a varsity coach all around the field of dreams!
When Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep as a ghost!, Cher, Andy Garcia, Pierce Brosnan and Abba combine for some highly sexual Twilight Zone episode, who needs teachers screwing students in real life?
Mamma Mia 2 is a fun summer movie that is as bizarre as it is entertaining.
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Review by Joe Viglione
Fear Not! This is not your grandpa's Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band debacle and - thankfully - it's not John Travolta's Saturday Night Fever (side note: Travolta's best shot at immortality, the recent Gotti, a disaster that they say was not Travolta's fault.)
This is a colorful, magical, inviting return to the well that was setting to screen the audio masterpieces crafted by the Swedish rock group Abba.
Is it somewhat incoherent? Yes. Well acted? Surprisingly, the strong cast inside this Gilligan's Island meets The Golden Girls and The Golden Boys take the sideways awkward script and keep your attention. Very much like the aforementioned Golden Girls TV series, you see the jokes coming at you in slow motion and it is up to the players to get you to laugh in spite of knowing the punchline. It is also up to this cast to keep the storyline coherent. And they do that, and do it quite well.
With more shots of midsections than a televised Red Sox game, or some naughty old lecherous old man allegedly filming the sweet spot of members of the Boston Sports Club at Stations Landing - through the window - unbeknownst to the people innocently working out (maybe that's the footage used in this film???) this motion picture goes down the rabbit hole, an Alice and Wonderland spectacle of vibrant light and sound that has so many strange elements the guys being dragged to see this might not mind it as much as they think they would.
Cher's entrance you've seen in the trailer, but it didn't stop many of the critics in the audience from loudly applauding her eminence as she takes the stage. And, on a musical level, her duet with Andy Garcia on "Fernando" is quite brilliant - and as intriguing as the ultra-strange "Super Trouper" that concludes this comedic epic. Familiar show tune fare? The Sound of Music this is not.
The plot? Lilly James plays a young version of "Donna," Meryl Streep's character, and she thinks nothing of hopping into bed to have casual sex with three breathtaking hunks Dorothy/Donna meets on the yellow brick road. Ho hum, so I'm going to digress again. If you think the comparison to Dorothy Gale of Kansas meeting the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion is off base, it isn't. The wardrobe and dance routines and every flavorful color from the spectrum are straight out of the Wizard of Oz, and it seems intentional. Even to the point of referencing Cher (exiled from The Witches of Eastwick) as "The Wicked Witch" long before she steps into the film.
So Dorothy/Donna jumps these guys to the point where they don't know who the real dad of Donna's child Sophie is (guess there's no DNA sampling on the Greek island, Detective J.J. Mclean! or is it McLane...whatever) - so as Donna/Lilly has a whirlwind lustful ménage à trois - though not simultaneously, we get to see beefcake magic from actors Josh Dylan (playing "Bill," a younger Stellan Skarsgård,) Hugh Skinner (as "Harry," a young Colin Firth,) and Jeremy Irvine playing "Sam," the younger rendition of Pierce Brosnan.
Keep that scorecard handy because you have to figure it out as this messy character un-development concoction is one big blur until the movie's ending. Oh, and stay after the credits to see a heavy-set George Scarpelli type try to pick up on one of the hunky dudes Donna bedded down.
As the hologram character told Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek the Next Generation "Dump the broad!" Who needs Lily James mucking up the works when they could have had a sequel to Bob & Carol, Ted & Alice and named it Sam and Bill and Harry. Thankfully, the shirts come off, and this film degenerates into more male exploitation than anything else. Perhaps the loveliest part of the entire sequel!
Yes, it's a chick flick, and the heavy emphasis is on the Three Dudes despite (or perhaps because of) the confusion of the parallel timelines, it all ends up in a dance routine to "Super Troupers" at the end, plagiarizing Kevin Kline's In and Out gay flick when everyone makes peace and starts dancing to the music at the remarriage of Debbie Reynolds and Wilford Brimley's characters.
Cher is quite dazzling, and she gets it on with a very older looking Andy Garcia as Fernando. Garcia, once a perpetual Hollywood hearthrob, has not aged gracefully at 62 and, sure, the heavy make-up makes Fernando look past 70, but when he and Cher duet on the Abba classic ("Fernando") it all works, and they make a lovely old couple to boot.
This critic did not see the first episode of this unique and different approach to film musicals, and it - Mamma Mia 2 - may hold up on the smaller screen for fans of the genre, but as summer fare goes - Magic Mike, Magic Mike II, Summer Lovers, the Bikini Beach movies of the 60s, it works well enough, and should also work at the cash register. The big question is - in this climate - can Cher have a hit with "Fernando" or "Super Trouper?" The soundtrack is on Capitol Records, a once powerful label (you've heard of the Beatles? haven't you?) now reduced to paper, a mere imprint, but it is a strong component of the legacy of songwriters/producers Bjorn and Benny that will sell Abba back catalog. And with this authorized film in release, rumors of the Abba quartet reuniting should now gather even more steam.
