Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again!!!

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing Mamma Mia! live at Theatre By the Sea in Matunuck. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, from the choreography, to the amazing sets, to the high energy performances of the highly talented actors. It was so enjoyable, in fact, that I decided to see Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again in theaters. Trouble was, I hadn't seen the first Mamma Mia! movie, and while I was now familiar with the storyline, I reasoned I would not naturally identify the actors with the roles.

Luckily, Mamma Mia! is currently available on Netflix, so I watched it on a rainy afternoon, and went to the evening showing of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again at the local independent (support your independent theatres!).

The original film follows Donna (played by Meryl Streep), a single mother, who is helping her 20-year-old daughter Sophie (played by Amanda Seyfried) prepare for her wedding the next day. Unbeknownst to Donna, Sophie has found Donna's diary and discovered that her father could be one of three men -- Sam Carmichael (played by Pierce Brosnan), Harry "Headbanger" Bright (played by Colin Firth), or Bill Andersson (played by Stellen Skarsgard) -- and so she has invited all three men to the wedding.

Bill (Skarsgard), Harry (Firth), and Sam (Brosnan)

Both women's best friends arrive to attend the wedding, as well as the three men, wackiness ensues, etc. In short, it's a fun movie.

Donna (far right) with her best friends Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski)

Having just seen the original for the first time only hours before seeing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the inconsistencies between the two movies were made all-the-more apparent. For starters, in the original, Donna's diary says she had her romantic encounter with Sam on July 17th, when he rowed her over to the little island. In the sequel Sam is the last of the three men she is romantically entangled with (and who she meets on the island itself). Bill remains the middle man in both movies, although in the original he rents a motorboat to take them to the island on August 4th, while in the sequel he is the one to first bring her to the island, which he does on his sailboat, and they don't have sex until later. Harry "turned up out of the blue" and she took him to the little island on August 11th according to Donna's diary, while the sequel has their romance occur solely in Paris.

Sophie (center) with her best friends Lisa (Ashley McDowel) and Ali (Ashley Lilley)

What difference does it make? you might be thinking. In all honesty, not a lot. The biggest difference is that in the original we are lead to believe that Donna is heartbroken from Sam's announcement that he is already engaged and will be returning home to marry his fiance, and that her romances with the other two men are rebounds. In the sequel, it seems more that Donna is simply carefree when it comes to sex, and when she finds out about Sam's engagement and confronts him about it, it's harder to think of her as heartbroken. We are therefore not all that surprised that when Bill reappears, she quickly spends a night with him.

Another issue the movies had with the men is their appearances. In the original, the men and Donna all have photographs of themselves from that summer 21 years before. In the photos, Sam appears with long hair and a mustache, Harry wears a spiked collar and leather jacket, and Bill has long blond hair. Bill also has tattoos of eyes on his knees that Donna immediately recognizes when the men show up for the wedding.

Photos of Sam, Harry, and Bill from Mamma Mia!

But the new actors portraying the three men's younger selves (yes, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again's plot draws parallels between Donna and Sophie's lives, so much of the movie is told in flashbacks) don't much resemble the very specific traits portrayed in the original films.

Pierce Brosnan (above) and Jeremy Irvine (below) as young Sam Carmichael

Colin Firth (above) and Hugh Skinner (below) as young Harry Bright

Stellan Skarsguard (above) and Josh Dylan (below) as Bill Andersson

Perhaps a much harder to comprehend inconsistency is that in the original movie, Donna mentions that her pious Catholic mother threw her out of the house after discovering Donna was pregnant. But in the sequel, Donna's mother is about as far from a devout Catholic as one can get -- she is introduced to the audience when she flies in on a private helicopter from Las Vegas, where she has been performing. And she's played by Cher.

Donna's devoutly catholic mother, Cher

But at the end of the day, none of these really matter to the plot. Maybe Donna lied about her mother. Maybe she got her dates wrong in her diary. It's not like she didn't remember having ever seen them before (looking at you Star Wars prequels -- how could nobody recognize those droids -- but that's a different article). These are minor details in an otherwise very fun movie.

Lily James is wonderful as the young Donna, while Alexa Davies and Jessica Keenan Wynn are perfectly cast as the younger versions of Donna's best friends Rosie and Tanya (who as adults are played by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski).

Walters and Baranski (above) and Davies and Wynn (below) as Rosie and Tanya

While many of the songs in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again were used in the original movie, the sequel makes many of them feel entirely knew, such as "Waterloo," as performed by Hugh Skinner, while others are used perfectly as callbacks to the original movie with scenes mirroring the original (such as "Dancing Queen").

Waterloo

The movie also adds songs not found in the original film; a personal favorite of mine is Donna's graduation scene, during which she and her friends perform "I Kissed the Teacher" before taking off on bicycles (as one does immediately following any graduation). Of course, it goes without saying that Cher's rendition of "Fernando" is flawless and perfect.

She kissed the teacher

Critics of the original's plot probably won't be much appeased by this one, but director Ol Parker did seem to take to heart the criticism of casting untrained singers (a.k.a. actors) for the lead roles in a musical. Many of the songs were directed to Cher, young Donna, and the young men portraying Sam, Bill, and Harry. This may be disappointing to those of us with soft spots in our hearts for Brosnan, Firth, and/or Skarsgard (seriously, how did I miss the first movie in theaters?), but the actors do still get plenty of screen time.

The new cast members are decidedly more musically trained than some of the older ones, with both Lily James (young Donna) and Josh Dylan (young Bill) having been trained at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Jeremy Irvine (Sam) having been educated at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Hugh Skinner (young Harry) having also been educated at LAMDA as well as cast in the movie of Les Miserables, and Jessica Keenan Wynn (young Tanya)  having been in stage productions of musicals Life Could Be a Dream, Les Miserables, and Heathers.

Since Mamma Mia! came out in 2008, the original cast has kept busy. Amanda Seyfried, who returns as Sophie, was cast as Cosette in the film version of Les Miserables. Dominic Cooper, who returns as Sophie's boyfriend Sky, has been portraying Howard Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man's dad) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Stellen Skarsgard (adult Bill) has also been attached to Marvel, playing Dr. Erik Selvig in the Thor and Avengers movies.

Dominic Cooper as Sky (above) and Howard Stark (below)

Colin Firth (adult Harry) has played King George VI in The Kings Speech. Pierce Brosnan (adult Sam), who was once James Bond, has been in a number of spy/action thrillers as of late, including November Man, Survivor, and The Foreigner. Christine Baranski went on to play Dr. Beverly Hofstander on the Big Bang Theory. And of course, Julie Walters returned to Harry Potter to finish the franchise as Molly Weasley. With such busy schedules, its a wonder they were able to get these actors together for Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. But I'm sure glad they did.

Overall, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a fun, uplifting, and upbeat summer flick. Is it going to win an Oscar? Probably not. But that's 100% ok -- sometimes you just want to see something and come out of the theater feeling good. And if that's what you're in the mood for, this is a perfect film for it. And, if they make another Mamma Mia in 10 years, I'll be the first in line.