Review of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) by Georgia H — 21 Jul 2018

I am supremely disappointed bu this movie. Not only did it not live up to the expectation of Mamma Mia! But it actually ruined the happy ending of the first movie. I went in in a pretty sad mood wanting a little fun and uplifting, and I wrongly assumed Mamma Mia! 2 would be a safe bet. It's unfortunate because the musicial numbers were fun and stunning. The actors playing the young versions were wonderful. I loved seeing how Donna met the guys. But the whole thing was watched under the shadow of Donna being dead. We never found out how, which wouldn't have made it any better. That whole plot point was obviously a cheep and lazy attempt to pull some emotion into the movie and was completely unnecessary and didn't actually contribute any conflict. AND it took away from the spirit of what Mamma Mia! is.

On top of this they didn't honor what Mamma Mia! established.

Donna stated that her mom was dead, but now she is alive, apparently just so Cher can sing one (albeit great) song.

Harry and Donna's story got cut short (that's a little pun from one of the funniest characters in the second movie) we saw Harry and Donna meet and ... in Paris but as we heard in Honny Honny he was supposed to "show up out of the blue" for Donna to show him the island and more ...ing. This never happened. Harry saw Donna sailing off with Sam when he tried to follow her and just walked off dejectedly. I kept waiting for him to show back up but alas was disappointed again.

Bill apparently cheated on Rosie, which I kept expecting them to explain away as a misunderstanding. Which apparently it wasn't. This totally changed the way I think about Bill AND Rosie as she got back together with him.

This movie had enough conflict with us seeing Donna's story firsthand with her ups and downs, and Sophie's struggles with reopening the hotel and finding out she was pregnant. Messing around withe the intended ending from the first movie and making negative changes to the pressent day was unnecessary and puur/uninventive writing.