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Thursday, July 26, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

“Mamma Mia! 

Here We Go 

Again”

Rave Cinemas, 

Quality 16

Legendary 

Entertainment

If it were possible to distill 
joy into liquid form and inject 
it directly into the vein, it still 
wouldn’t be as potent or infec-
tious a high as “Mamma Mia! 
Here We Go Again.”
Stuffed to the brim with beau-
tiful people, colors, happy songs 
and bright emotions, the sequel 
to the original 2008 “Mamma 
Mia” is one of the best movie 
theater experiences you’re like-
ly to find this year, or even this 
decade. It’s two straight hours 
of cathartic emotional release, 
a swirling giddy combination of 
laughter, tears and dance.
The film opens several years 
after the first ended — Amanda 
Seyfried (“Anon”) plays Sophie, 
reeling from the death of her 
mother, Donna (Meryl Streep, 
“The Post”). Sophie’s in the pro-
cess of rebranding the Greek 
island hotel her mother owned, 
attempting to return it to its 
former glory to honor Donna’s 
memory. The modern-day story 
is intercut with flashes back to 
1979, in which we follow young 
Donna, played by Lily James 
(“Darkest Hour”), as she travels 
across Europe and has a series 
of brief, but meaningful, love 
affairs.
Every single person involved 
with making this movie is at 
their shining, brightest best. 
James turns in one of the most 
charismatic and charming per-

formances in recent memory, 
full of a vibrant young energy 
that makes it obvious why these 
three men would immediately 
fall in love with her. She’s the 
kind of actress who makes it 
nearly impossible to look away 
when she’s on-screen, dedicating 
herself with an almost reckless 
abandon to the glitter and brava-
do of this movie — as does every 
single other actor here. There’s a 
sense pervading the entire movie 
that everybody is just so happy 
to be there. And thank God they 
were, because I am 
so happy to be here 
too.
“Do what makes 
your soul shine,” 
Julie 
Walters’s 
character 
tells 
Sophie 
as 
she 
makes what seems 
like an impossible 
choice. It’s a gor-
geous mantra, one 
that’s 
entrenched 
in the bones of 
this story. Because for all the 
sparkles and spectacle, “Mamma 
Mia” shines at its heart.
I wish I could explain, in 
words, all the things I loved 
about “Mamma Mia.” If I could, 
I’d tell you about Colin Firth 
(“Kingsman: The Golden Cir-
cle”) 
and 
Stellan 
Skarsgård 
(“The Man Who Killed Don 
Quixote”) swinging their hips in 
tandem atop a boat while “Danc-
ing Queen” swells. I’d tell you 
about “Waterloo” in a French 

restaurant, and a baguette being 
used as an electric guitar. I’d tell 
you about big floppy hats and 
flowing colorful skirts, or about 
the way the chemistry between 
James and Josh Dylan (“Allied”) 
jumps clear off the screen.
If I had the words, I’d tell you 
about the world of “Mamma 
Mia,” the way it’s full of love and 
bravery, of people who live their 
lives with passion and romance, 
never (in the words of fellow 
Daily staffer Arya Naidu, who 
spent most of this movie sitting 
dead 
straight 
in 
her chair with one 
hand over her heart 
and another peri-
odically punching 
me in the arm) set-
tling for anything 
that doesn’t abso-
lutely thrill them. 
I don’t really have 
the words, though, 
because 
“Mamma 
Mia” is not a movie 
to be written about 
— it’s meant to be felt.
“Mamma Mia” operates not on 
any kind of fancy twists of sto-
rytelling mechanics, but rather 
on the rawest levels of cathar-
sis — the viewer is taken by the 
hand and whisked on a journey 
through whatever will make 
them laugh or cry the most in 
each moment. In the process, 
“Mamma Mia” develops an emo-
tional language through song 
and dance that’s clear and well-
formed. All the bombast and 

chaos is tied together by a tight 
intuitive throughline, coming 
together to create a story about 
the passions and tribulations of 
life, and all the ways love can 
hurt and heal people. It’s about 
dancing and motherhood, sex, 
joy and generations of women 
supporting and caring for each 
other.
Kim Gordon once said that 
“People pay to see others believe 
in 
themselves,”* 
and 
with 
“Mamma Mia” that’s exactly 
what we did. There’s a scene 
near the end that cuts between 
the young and newly pregnant 
Sophie singing with her mother’s 
best friends and young Donna 
giving birth to Sophie. Donna is 
all alone in a dilapidated farm-
house, until the kind older Greek 
woman who owns it comes run-
ning to her. She strokes her hair 
and helps her birth the baby that 
will grow up to be Sophie, sing-
ing on that very same island in 
tribute to her brave and beautiful 
mother — and right in that scene 
I understood that this is a movie 
about women making the choices 
to define their lives in ways that 
excite and fulfill them. They’re 
looking for love — real love, not 
the cheap stuff — and real joy, 
and this story is a celebration of 
their search as they reach just a 

little higher.
It’s about pop music, perfect 
Greek islands, sequined body 
suits and about how sometimes 
being a dancing queen means 
singing your way through a 
broken heart, performing with 
your whole body and soul for an 
empty room. It’s about (literally) 
falling into the arms of a Scan-
danavian sailor with the bluest 
eyes you’ve ever seen, about par-
ties filled with all the people you 
love most in the world. It’s about 
Cher showing up uninvited at 
the stroke of midnight, blonde 
and fabulous, and declaring that 
Sophie has “glitter in her blood.” 
 
It’s the rare movie that lifts 
your spirits from the feet up, 
never doubting the innate good-
ness of its characters or devaluing 
the sweet and corny happiness it 
brings into the world. “Mamma 
Mia” is a magical movie, full of 
moments so over the top perfect, 
so 
heart-wrenchingly 
happy 
that I couldn’t stop smiling for 
its entire runtime. It’s the kind 
of movie that makes the world 
a little bit brighter — the kind 
of movie that makes your soul 
shine.

*Thank you, again, to Arya 
Naidu for providing this quote

FILM REVIEW

LEGENDARY ENTERTAINMENT

ASIF BECHER
Summer Editor in Chief

‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go 
Again’ glitters with joy, fun

